Available:*
Library | Material Type | Shelf Number | Status |
---|---|---|---|
Searching... Main Library | Book | FICTION ESQUIVE | Searching... Unknown |
Bound With These Titles
On Order
Summary
Summary
Instead of entering the world crying like other babies, Júbilo was born with a smile on his face. He had a gift for hearing what was in people's hearts, for listening to sand dunes sing and insects whisper. Even as a young boy, acting as an interpreter between his warring Mayan grandmother and his Spanish-speaking mother, he would translate words of spite into words of respect, so that their mutual hatred turned to love. When he grew up, he put his gift to good use in his job as a humble telegraph operator. But now the telegraph lies abandoned, obsolete as a form of communication in the electronic age, and don Júbilo is on his deathbed, mute and estranged from his beloved wife, Lucha, who refuses to speak to him. What tragic event has come between two such sensuous, loving people to cause their seemingly irreparable rift? What mystery lies behind the death of the son no one ever mentions? Can their daughter bring reconciliation to her parents before it is too late, by acting as an interpreter between them, just as Júbilo used to do for other people? Swift as Desire is Laura Esquivel's loving tribute to her father, who worked his own lifelong magic as a telegraph operator. In this enchanting, bittersweet story, touched with graphic earthiness and wit, she shows us how keeping secrets will always lead to unhappiness, and how communication is the key to love.
Reviews (1)
Kirkus Review
A tender and thoughtful, if at times rather stilted, tale of a Mexican telegraph operator, by the megaselling author best known for her debut novel, Like Water for Chocolate (1992). Don Júbilo was blessed at birth with almost supernatural hearing and an instinctive understanding of all kinds of communication, from an insect's faint rustle to the sweet sighs of a woman in love. His odd gift is noted by his Mayan grandmother, doña Itzel, who quarrels with his Spanish grandmother, doña Jesusa, over the best way to raise him. Doña Itzel takes him to visit Mayan ruins, explaining the hieroglyphics and number dots as best she can to the impressionable boy, who is entranced by the Mayan notion of the galaxy as a resonating matrix in which the transformation of information occurs instantly. Júbilo is equally intrigued by a history lesson centering on an intrepid telegraph operator, a profession he later takes up to support his young wife Lucha, despite his dreams of becoming a singer. In the era before telephone services, interpreting Morse code messages for villagers and rich landowners alike puts Júbilo at the center of many lives as his own falls slowly and inexorably apart. Lucha, the spoiled youngest daughter of a wealthy family, is distressed by their relative poverty and her inability to conceive again after their first child, Raul, is born. Júbilo does the best he can, but his weakness for alcohol gets the better of him. Years later, a second son, Ramiro, accidentally suffocates one night when his father, in a drunken stupor, doesn't hear the baby's cries. Lucha demands a divorce, although she is pregnant with daughter Lluvia, who grows up to write the story of Júbilo's life. Irony of ironies: he is bedridden and mute from Parkinson's disease, no longer able to communicate at all. An imaginative, lyrical fictional memoir, it seems, of the author's own father. (Interesting note: Gabriel Garcia Marquez's father was also a telegraph operator, although the short piece he did recently was much less moony than Esquivel's.) First printing of 250,000; author tour