Reviews provided by Syndetics
Library Journal Review
Irving's (A Widow for One Year) new novel centers on accomplished novelist Juan -Diego Guerro, who is on a pilgrimage to the Philippines to keep a promise he made decades ago as a young boy living in a trash dump in Oaxaca, Mexico. During his travels, Juan Diego is taken under the wing of an attractive mother and daughter duo who appear and disappear at will. In an attempt to keep up with them, Juan Diego mixes up his doses of Viagra and the beta-blocker Lopressor, possibly causing him to have vivid dreams of his youth. Through these flashbacks, listeners learn that, despite living in abject poverty, the young Juan Diego, a self-taught reader, was able to enrich his world through the books that others had thrown away. Irving's outlandish and original characters, including Juan Diego's mind-reading sister Lupe, two ineffectual but endearing Jesuit priests, a transvestite, and a troupe of circus performers, are brought to life by narrator Armondo Duran. While it is bursting with humor and fantastic characters and events, the author's latest novel is also a compelling exploration of the human condition. VERDICT An essential purchase for all fiction collections. ["An intricate plot, troubled and quirky but lovable characters, and an examination of social issues that arises naturally without coming across as didactic": LJ 9/15/15 starred review of the S. & S. hc.]-Beth Farrell, Cleveland State Univ. Law Lib. © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publishers Weekly Review
Duran manages this multifaceted, character-rich tome with aplomb. He has quirky tones that catch Irving's humor, humanism, and intellectual and political acumen, as well as his salacious eccentricities. The brilliant, self-educated 14-year-old Juan Diego and his mind-reading 13-year-old sister, Lupe, scavenge and live in the garbage heaps outside the Mexican city of Oaxaca. Around them circle rigid priests and warm-hearted clergy, the "dump boss" who may be their father, a bevy of prostitutes including their mother, a doctor, an American priest who falls for a lovable transvestite, and an assortment of dogs, circus performers, and sundry animals. Around Juan Diego Gurrero, the world-famous novelist traveling the world, are his former student, a sex-crazed mother and daughter who may not exist, and an assortment of ghosts. Duran leads the listener through the plot twists and mysteries surrounding the Virgin Mary and her counterpart, the dark-skinned Virgin of Guadalupe, and, in and out of the realities, dreams and memories of the young and old Juan Diego. This is vintage Irving, and Duran handles it well. A Simon & Schuster hardcover. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* The giant dump in Oaxaca, Mexico, hardly seems like fertile ground for a future novelist, yet Juan Diego, the only one who can understand his sister's extraordinary pronouncements as a mind reader and clairvoyant, teaches himself to read Spanish and English, burning his hands as he pulls books from dump fires. Those wounds heal, but an accident leaves him with a smashed foot and severe limp. Now a famous writer living in the U.S. with alarmingly high blood pressure, Juan Diego tells his fantastic story in trancelike flashbacks. We meet his and his sisterLupe's mother, Esperanza, a cleaning woman and prostitute; Flor, a resilient transvestite; two unusual Jesuits, Brother Pepe (the epitome of goodness) and self-flagellating, Hawaiian-shirt-wearing Edward from Iowa; and members of the local circus. In the present, Juan Diego is visiting the Philippines, where he is bewitched by a strangely assertive, sexy mother-daughter duo. Irving (In One Person, 2012) is spectacularly hilarious and incisive in this tender, mystical, yet caustic tale, which features a wrathful statue of the Virgin Mary and impassioned castigations of the church's tragic failings. Irving often portrays writers in his novels, but Juan Diego is a special case, bringing particularly enchanting radiance to this empathically imagined, masterfully told, and utterly transporting tale of transcendent sacrifice and perseverance, unlikely love, and profound mysteries. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Irving has phenomenal literary star power, and this magical novel will be heavily promoted and urgently requested.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2015 Booklist
Kirkus Book Review
Sex, drugs, and mariachi: Irving's (In One Person, 2013, etc.) latest ventures south of the border and then back again, tracing the long road and unforeseeable turns that we travel in this world. The sex is constantat least the desire for it is. ("Juan Diego had noticed that Miriam's breasts were also attractive, though her nipples were not visible through her sweater.") The drugs: well, do Lopressor and Viagra count? And as for the mariachi, it's the soundtrack to a long dream in which "it was impossible to tell where the music came from." When you come to think of it, life itself is pretty much an avenue of mysteries, though, per Irving, not without its comedy in the midst of tragedy and disappointment. Juan Diego, whose very name invokes the first saint of the Americas, has had an eventful journey over half a century from the landfills of Guerrero to Iowa and literary renown; now an accomplished writer, he nears the end of that journey in a faraway city, drifting in and out of a long dream in which he retraces his steps. Or, perhaps, a step and a limp, for, in good Greek tragic mode, Juan Diego nurses a crushed foot that reminds him of the receding past with every ache. Now in Manila, a place that shares the English and Spanish halves of Juan Diego's self but adds its own exotic element, Juan Diego confronts his mortality while puzzling out questions of a theological and much more earthly nature: the mother-and-daughter team that he lusts for over 500-odd pages, for instance, may be more than ordinary mortals, just as everyone Juan Diego has met may be angels or devils in disguise. Irving works his familiar themesCatholicism, sex, deathwith a light and assured touch, and though the dream-narrative construct is a little shelf-worn, it serves the story well. Though not as irresistible as early works such as The World According to Garp and The Hotel New Hampshire, a welcome return to form. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.