Faults: A Novel (Djuna Books) [Paperback]

Terri de la Peña (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2000 | Series: Djuna Books

Chapter Three

December 31: Morning

Toni

A monotonous hum wakes me, but I'm afraid to open my eyes to verify my surroundings. I lie still. Am I on the train? Did I simply dream I came home? I am stationary, not rocking with the ceaseless motion of the railway car. I smell coffee and the down-home aroma of freshly made tortillas de harina. If Mama is here, she is being unnaturally quiet.

I wonder if the continuous mechanical sound is the echo of the Santa Monica Freeway a few blocks south. As if to test my speculation, the hum intensifies, falters, wheezes, grows monotonous again. It is much too close to be the freeway. Eyes closed, I reach one hand behind me to feel the rough plaster of the bedroom wall. It's warm to the touch, and it vibrates. The hum must be coming from Mama's ancient refrigerator on the other side of the wall. Her duplex is noisy, creaky, unlike the unyielding silence of Amanda's cabin.

I snuggle within the fragrant scent of pink flannel sheets. Mama has made the extra bedroom cozy, tempting me to stay. When I turned in last night, I found a bouquet of daisies beside the bed, before the framed picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Little sachet packets lay in the dresser drawers, and cedar blocks in the narrow closet. Mama has welcomed me into her home.

She has been lonely since my father's death. Realizing that, I try to understand why my sister Sylvia and her brute of a husband are living next door. No matter how much I rationalize Mama's circumstances, I still resent my sister's proximity. She must have manipulated Mama's emotions with a familiar tactic: a hard-luck story. At least I have heard nothing from Sylvia--yet.

Rolling my head on the pillow, I notice my hair is still damp. Last night, following Gabi's suggestion, I took a relaxing soak and shampooed and conditioned my hair, mostly to avoid arguing with Mama about Sylvia. Before I escaped to the bathroom, Gabi seemed eager to leave. She knew I was tired from the trip and promised to see me over the weekend. I half-hoped she would offer me an alternate place to stay, but I didn't want to impose on her and her father. Jeff doesn't need to be reminded of Sylvia anyway.

I reluctantly get up. The tedious

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Feminist writer de la Pe?a (Margins) attempts, with mixed results, to give voice to five different Latina women linked by blood or love, each struggling with her own emotional baggage. After 18 unhappy months living with an old college girlfriend in the woods of the Pacific Northwest, where she retreated after losing her job as a librarian, 40-year-old Toni Dorado is returning to Los Angeles. Her mother, Adela, and college-aged niece, Gabriela, are eager to welcome Toni home, but Toni's estranged sister, Sylvia, is less enthusiastic, as is activist Pat Ramos, Toni's abandoned ex. These womenAwho speak and think in varying degrees of convincing SpanglishAnarrate by turns, but their credibility suffers when they rattle off sound bites about spousal abuse, underrepresentation of minorities in the media, or spout stock phrases from self-help books. As one-dimensional as the narrators can be, the supporting cast is even worse: Sylvia's wife-beating husband, Zalo, is one muy macho Chicano, smashing every object in sight while growling threats and insults. Gabriela is understandably eager to get her mom away from her evil stepdad, and Toni campaigns against Zalo, too; Adela, who accepts Toni's lesbianism in spite of being a devout Catholic, balks at breaking up Sylvia's marriage. Meanwhile, Toni is trying to get back together with Pat, who is justifiably ticked off at having been dumped the year before for Toni's Anglo old flame. After the Northridge earthquake, during which bad people are conveniently punished, most conflicts are neatly resolved. One wishes that de la Pe?a had gone beyond stock situations and characters and really probed the heart of her community.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Homesick Toni Dorado leaves the north woods and Amanda to return to her family in L.A. and, perhaps, to her former lover Pat. No sooner is she back home than she learns her estranged sister Sylvia is pregnant--and living in the duplex next door with her unemployed, drunken, wife-beating current husband. The also homophobic brute trashes Toni's widowed Mama's income property and bashes Pat's car before police arrest him. Sylvia's ex, a formerly hunky surfer now confined to a wheelchair and a lucrative psychotherapy practice, gives words of wisdom and temporary refuge to Sylvia's daughter Gabi, to Mama, and to the two sisters, who spit tacks at each other whenever possible. So why, Pat wonders, has she gotten re-embroiled with the Dorados? Some readers may wonder, too, especially if they are also thrown by the Spanish with which de la Pena liberally salts the basically English text. If they relish dysfunctional family fare, however, no problemo. Whitney Scott

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Alyson Books; 1st edition (September 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1555834787
• ISBN-13: 978-1555834784
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,378,703 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Some Strengths of "Faults"ÿ, December 30, 1999

By 

Tracy Moore (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Faults: A Novel (Djuna Books) (Paperback)

Other reviewers have outlined the plot of this novel adequately, but more needs to be said about the deft characterizations, setting, and style.

The five primary characters in Faults have each been given a distinct voice. The novel is structured through short chapters, each in the first-person voice of five very different women. Terri de la Pena has created characteristic idioms, world-views, personalities, and character strenghts and 'faults' for each person. I was fascinated as these characters unfolded; it is a risky and, in Terri's hands, successful narrative technique.

Two reviewers complained about the mix of Spanish words and phrases in the narratives, a perspective I would like to counter. My Spanish understanding is based on a couple of semesters 20 years ago, and although I didn't understand the litteral meaning of every Spanish phrase, I found the use of Spanish absolutely authentic to the characters, and actually pretty easy to decode. In fact, there is often a translation of sorts in the context, many are English cognates, and others are common Spanish heard in the US. So don't let it put you off. Even when you don't understand the phrase, the intent and mood is clear. Actually, the use of Spanish adds a great deal to the novel--how much Spanish crops up in a character's thoughts, for instance, provides insight to her personal culture. Also, the presence of Spanish is important to the sense of living as Chicanas in an Anglo macroculture. Bilingualism (and not every Chicano/a speaks Spanish) must be an enormous, perhaps a defining part of the experience. For a non-Spanish speaker of another culture to criticize what is clearly a deeply imbedded cultural characteristic shows a regretable bias, and listening to it would limit one's aesthetic. Finally, I want to say that for Chicanas and others with Spanish-based cultures, the language mix must be quite welcome. (Terri de la Pena is not the only Chicana author writing in this manner, of course.)

I appreciate the attention Terri de la Pena pays to environment in her settings--from street and business names to architectural details. Though briefly mentioned, these things add to the authentic ring of the story.

One other strength of the structure created by the five woman characters is the way time unfolds as the characters speak. Each short narrative takes place within a given moment or brief period of time; in fact, each section is dated so we have a sense of events defining a period of several weeks. What we know about the past is colored by the POV of the speaker, so the contrasting views give us various "truths" that we must sort out as we perceive the biases of each woman.

I have focused on three aspects of Terri de la Pena's writing that contribute to the strength of "Faults." The sum is, of course, much more than the parts. The book is an important addition to lesbian literature which offers a reading experience rich on many levels. I recommend it.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is a wonderful, worthwhile read, October 11, 1999

By 

E. V. Gatlin (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Faults: A Novel (Djuna Books) (Paperback)

"Faults", (a book that has very few)-- is certainly a wonderful read! I've had the great pleasure of reading De La Pena's earlier books, and throughout each, the author exhibits a delightful writing style and a penchant for giving the reader a marvelous insight into some aspects of the trials, tribulations and ultimate triumphs of some Latino families. In this particular book, you are drawn into the day-to-day relationships between Toni, her family and her close friends, and you are kept interested, long after you have turned the last page. I recommend this book highly, in spite of the use of many Spanish phrases, which might require the use of a Spanish/English dictionary if you don't have at least a rudimentary understanding of the Spanish language.

4.0 out of 5 stars These little earthquakes, July 30, 2002

By 

"blissengine" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Faults: A Novel (Djuna Books) (Paperback)

In late 1993, right before the new year, Toni Dorado is returning home to Los Angeles to face the lover she left abruptly and to reconnect with her family. Her niece and her mother are very excited to have her back, but her sister Sylvia isn't happy at all, and she has her own problems in the form of an abusive husband. Toni struggles to make amends with Pat, her former lover, and the two slowly begin to communicate about where to go from here. As the various women's lives and sometimes volatile relationships collide, so too does the earth as a major earthquake hits the area in January 1994, forcing the women to face some naked truths about each other and about themselves. Even though the earthquake has a deus ex machina feel (where it solves problems so the characters don't have to), "Faults" is quite a remarkable novel for creating a beautiful portrait of a present-day Chicana family to which everyone can relate.