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Summary
Summary
Don Victor Sobrevilla, a lovable, eccentric engineer, always dreamed of founding a paper factory in the heart of the Peruvian rain forest, and at the opening of this miraculous novel his dream has come true--until he discovers the recipe for cellophane. In a life already filled with signs and portents, the family dog suddenly begins to cough strangely. A wild little boy turns azurite blue. All at once Don Victor is overwhelmed by memories of his erotic past; his prim wife, Doña Mariana, reveals the shocking truth about her origins; the three Sobrevilla children turn their love lives upside down; the family priest blurts out a long-held secret.... A hilarious plague of truth has descended on the once well-behaved Sobrevillas, only the beginning of this brilliantly realized, generous-hearted novel. Marie Arana's style, originality, and trenchant wit will establish her as one of the most audacious talents in fiction today andCellophaneas one of the most evocative and spirited novels of the year. From the Hardcover edition.
Reviews (1)
Kirkus Review
A debut novel from Washington Post Book World editor Arana (American Chica, 2001) that blends magical realism with matter-of-fact descriptions of things Amazonian. Like the Peruvian poet Csar Vallejo's "Black Stone Lying on a White Stone" and the Colombian novelist Gabriel Garc"a Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude, Peruvian-American Arana's narrative opens with an intimation of mortality: Its protagonist, the sonorously named Don Victor Sobrevilla Paniagua, foresees his death "in a bustling metropolis, surrounded by doting women." But first he must find an opposite setting, for Don Victor has an obsession with paper. Thus, in 1913, he treks across the Andes to a place that does not appear on any map, the vegetation-choked hamlet of Floralinda, where he founds a papermaking empire. Mad scientist that he is, Don Victor is not satisfied with paper alone, though his obsession endures: He realizes that one can make paper from any plant, and that bit of occult knowledge informs the rest of his life. Still, his larger ambition is to make something else, even greater than the French engineer Gustave Eiffel's iron building downriver: "To erect an iron house in the Amazon had been spectacular. To produce cellophane in quantities would be a miracle." His children--one wild, one bookish, one hauntingly beautiful, all a little odd--tolerate Don Victor's dream, as does his wife, Mariana, at least to some extent. Where they differ, they do so openly, for over much of the narrative, the people of Floralinda are afflicted with a habit of speaking the truth. (The encounter of the village priest with a supposedly possessed and most worldly woman is a stitch.) All that changes, though, when outsiders arrive, one by one: an Australian adventurer, an American mapmaker and eventually the army, after which Don Victor's world changes, slipping "from cellophane to official parchment." A pleasure to read. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
