Customer Reviews

Homicide Survivors Picnic and Other Stories

5 star:		(3)
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Just chosen as one of the five best books of fiction published in the US in 2009, Homicide Survivor's Picnic is elegant in style and searingly honest in its depiction of American lives touched by tragedy. I fully appreciated the lack of the victim's stance in each of these fraught and yet delicate stories. It is a testament to Ms. Lopez's talent that this collection is inspiring and hopeful and yet dedicatedly honest about the sad waste violence leaves in its wake. The American family of the 21st century has long evolved from picket fence America. The family is more interesting now, as Lopez gamely demonstrates. Read it and cheer!

This is an interesting book that is definitely written from a Latino perspective. In this book of short stories the author gives her depiction of the lives of (mostly) Hispanic-American family touched by violence and/or tragedy. Each story is well-written showing Lopez as a talented writer. She writes with honesty and clarity that makes you want to keep turning the pages.

~Reviewed by [...]

If I based my decision to read this book on the other reviewers here on Amazon there's no way I would have read it. They read as if they are written by paid advertisers or hack Latino-Life-type magazine writers who don't know literature.

But the one story I've read from this collection ("The Threat of Peace"--I'll edit my review once I read the rest, which I now will) was one of the more frank and cynically-uplifting stories I've read in a while. I felt elation when the character decided to actually do something, and even though this happened right at the end it did not seem hacky, it seemed dead on, and exhilarating, because the rest of the story contextualizes it perfectly, with realism and even--and this is a tough one to pull off--humor which does not detract from the emotional seriousness. It's surprising how often we can end up or just plain put ourselves in bad situations without doing anything about it. Step one: read this story.