From Publishers Weekly
Jacobs, a career diplomat who regularly publishes stories in major literary reviews, speaks with the voice of intimate experience in these dozen stories set in Central and South America. In lush descriptive passages, he makes a foreign land intimate and accessible. He has created an equally compelling cast characters-Americans, Latin Americans, revolutionaries, romantics, criminals, and average people-that illustrate the violence and passion in both the people and the landscape. In powerful language Jacobs twists the reader's point-of-view, forcing one to see the land through its people but also to understand how attachment to the land influences actions. From a girl's coming-of-age in the touching ``The Necessary Plane'' to the exhilarating ``The Book of Pain and Suffering'' in which the narrator loses himself (almost literally) in the mystical stories of a local Paraguayan woman, the author evokes a difficult beauty. It's rare that a collection of short stories is so consistent, but Jacobs' exquisite craftsmanship never wavers.
Copyright 1994 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
North American writers have evolved a tradition of writing about their compatriots who travel to Latin America to fill in the emptiness of their lives. Jacobs, a diplomat who has spent much of his life in the countries in which these stories are set, confronts that tradition head-on, as his outsider characters-divided among lost souls, nuns, magicians, and writer/ reporters-meet the insider Latin Americans. In "Stone Cowboy in the High Plains," the flip side of the Marlboro Man, an ex-convict drug abuser, turns the tables on the employer who first exploited and then robbed him. In "Lover's Leap," a mild-mannered college student takes up with a beautiful, bridge-jumping Latina who promised him "fireworks love." In "The Murder of German Morales," a unionist learns that a veneer of international brotherhood may hide corrupting influences. The stories are engaging and smart. Recommended for general collections.
Harold Augenbraum, Mercantile Lib., New York
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Harold Augenbraum, Mercantile Lib., New York
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
