2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Best Summer Read So Far, June 19, 2004
By A Customer
This review is from: Hat Dance: A Novel (Hardcover)
Hat Dance is by the author of Ostrich, for which he was selected as a Barnes and Nobles "Great New Writer." If you read and loved Ostrich, I think you'll like Hat Dance even better. Hat Dance is hilarious, it has great characters, and it's set in an exotic location. I loved that the "exotic location" is a humble peasant village high in the mountains of central Mexico. The author is an anthropologist, so he's got the cultural stuff down--it's a look at a slice of Mexico that I've never seen written about before. Plus, it's an buddy story with an unusual slant. The main character, Lee, is an American anglo expatriot journalist. His buddy and partner, photographer Checo, is a "chilango" (someone from Mexico City) who is deeply horrified that Lee has dragged him into the boondocks. Plus Lee has his competent but touchy, somewhat estranged daughter and her chicano boyfriend, who is searching for his roots, along for the ride. They're going to document a fiesta and a Zapatista-style rebellion in the village, through an article and photos, and a documentary film (the daughter and boyfriend). Except that the rebels only have a rusty pistol and a few rounds between them, and their wives are getting sick of them goofing off in their rebel camp instead of tending their milpas, their fields. There are lots of comic complications, and some seriously threatening overtones provided by an officious Mexican officer sent to quell the rebellion and an American mercenary who is truely scary.
There are many scenes in this book that had me laughing out loud and there's at least one that I don't think I will ever forget, it struck me as so funny. The humor is built on a real love for the characters and the author sneaks a point of view in under the radar, having to do with America's role in the third world.
In the interests of full disclosure, I should tell you that I'm the author's wife and editor. I've asked Mike to tell University of New Mexico press, which published Hat Dance, to do the paperwork and provide a copy of the book to Amazon, so that Amazon can provide you a preview of the book. Then you can judge for yourself! But, since university presses are known for not doing much to market their books; if it's not available for preview when you read this, you might chedk out some of the reviews for Ostrich just to verify my claim that Mike's a really skilled humorist with a knack for characters and an underpinning of life-affirming values.
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