Tales from the Town of Widows

Canon has created a world both hauntingly familiar and startlingly inventive. The Widow's Town is a must read.

Highly recommended read, especially for those who enjoy literature from Latin America. Combines the magical realism of much of the literature I've read from Colombia, alongside personal stories of the many-years-long conflict. A very beatiful epic-like and unusual story of love, interdependence and the will to survive.

Tales from the Town of Widows and Chronicles from the Land of Men is a feast for anyone who relishes beautiful, intelligent writing infused with humor and humanity. Set against the backdrop of the Colombian civil war, it tells the story of a group of women living in a remote mountain village who are forced to fend for themselves after a band of Communist guerrillas descends on the village and forcibly recruits all the men, killing those who resist and leading the others away to fight for their cause. The women and children who are left behind must overcome their grief, fear, ignorance and passivity in order to survive and build a new society of their own on the patriarchal rubble of the old. The book embodies many contradictions without ever pulling at the seams. It is at once lyrical and brutal, subversive and idealistic, satirical and affecting, wickedly funny and profoundly sad. It tackles big issues--religion, politics, sexual politics--but its real power lies in the poignant and often comic humanity of its characters, with their hairy, muscular legs and rectangular bodies, their migrating warts and luxurious mustaches. And those are just the women: the widows, spinsters, prostitutes and virgins who inhabit the town of Mariquita. We are also given, in journalistic chronicles at the end of each chapter, brief and often shocking glimpses of the men and boys doomed to fight in the war, and the civilians caught up in its senseless violence. The book begins in 1992 and ends, 16 years later, in 1992. (Among the many innovations the women conceive is the concept of female time, which is based on the menstrual cycle and runs backwards. They also end up rejecting religion, making clothing optional and deciding that heterosexuality is over-rated.) Each chapter focuses on a particular woman: Doña Emilia, the madam of the village's whorehouse, who loses all her customers when the men are taken away; Cleotilde Guarnizo, the mannish, mustached schoolteacher with the stomping gait and mysterious past; Francisca viuda de Gómez, the widow who finds a fortune under her bed; Julia Morales, born Julio, whose mother dresses him as a girl to hide him from the guerrillas and who grows up to become the town beauty. But the main character, the unifying force of the village and of the book, is Rosalba viuda de Patiño, the widow of the town's police sergeant. Soon after the men are taken away, Rosalba is appointed Magistrate by a passing government soldier. It falls on her, an uneducated housewife with no leadership experience, to rouse the women from their grief and apathy and restore order, prosperity and hope to the village -- a seemingly impossible task that requires all her ingenuity and determination. In the end, Rosalba and the other villagers create a new society based on the values of women: harmony, cooperation and respect for every individual, whether female or male, gay or straight, buck naked or wearing a red polka dot dress that's tight

This book marks the arrival of a writer I'm very sure will become a household name in the near future. James Canon is a very talented writer and this book proves the depth of his imagination. It tells the story of how the women from a small town in the Andes mountains of Colombia struggle to survive after all the men are forcibly taken or executed by the guerrillas. James Canon moved to the States from Colombia to study English and ended up getting a writing degree from Columbia University. He wrote this book in English, so there is nothing lost in the translation. He weaves a modern day tale which includes magical realism, war dispatches, heartfelt love and much more. Each chapter is followed by a chronicle from the land of men in which members of the leftist guerrillas, the paramilitary forces and the Colombian army share their experiences of the endless war. I was very touched by this book and highly recommend it.

In the tradition of Laura Esquivel's LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOALTE this stunning debut novel relies on delicious doses of magical realism to entrance the reader into the extraordinary realm of Maraquita, Columbia, a hamlet reborn with visionary ideas of social, political and environmental responsibilites. I became hypnotized with the introduction of these abandonded women whom are forced to re-invent themselves and their society. Employing humor, despair and sometimes shock these tales intoxicate and inspire!