The Last Known Residence of Mickey Acuna: A Novel (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Mickey said he'd checked into the Grand because he needed a place to stay cheap, and this downtown hotel seemed as good as any..." (more)
Key Phrases: formica counter, Charles Towne, John Hooper, The Last Known Residence (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Recalling the trenchant portraits of the dispossessed urban poor by post-colonial writers like Alex La Guma and Jessica Hagedorn, Gilb's first novel (after the multiple award-winning short-story collection, The Magic of Blood) demonstrates his sensitivity towards the gritty, everyday world of the Southwestern, Chicano underclass. In highly evocative prose that often slides into Spanish, Gilb here portrays the angst-ridden, posturing Mickey Acu?a, who arrives at the El Paso YMCA on the run from an unknown past event looking only for anonymity and a mailing address. Plagued by inertia and self-doubt, waiting for a check that never arrives, obsessed with obtaining an "unpolluted understanding" of his surroundings, Mickey gradually fraternizes with the other disenfranchised Y residents. Gilb focuses on the slow passage of time at the Y and the daily interactions of Mickey's neighbors, like the Charles Manson-esque Reverend Miller and the paranoid loner Charles Towne, both of whom fixate desperately on the delivery of mail. Gilb's unhurried story line occasionally bogs down in the mundane details of life at the Y, yet his characterizations of the underemployed, mentally ill and abandoned men and women who congregate there are vibrant.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Like the powerful stories in his The Magic of Blood (LJ 4/15/93), Gilb's first novel evokes the heat and dust, poverty, lassitude, and passion of the urban Southwest. With an undivulged past and an uncertain future, rugged, itinerant Mickey waits at an El Paso YMCA for a change in fortune. A dime Western is his bible, working out and desultory hanging out his pastimes. Caught between the chronic malaise of shiftlessness and the spark of mischief, competitiveness, and libido he still possesses, Mickey watches the pathos of his neighbors even as he senses his own. At times, the narrative drifts perilously close to a too-accurate reflection of the resignation and pointlessness it limns, but Gilb buoys his tale with sensitivity, acuity, and humor. For larger public libraries and area collections.
Janet Ingraham, Worthington P.L., Ohio
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 218 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press; 1st Pbk. Ed edition (September 11, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 080213419X
• ISBN-13: 978-0802134196
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #162,771 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A "slight" novel? Are you nuts?, May 14, 1999

By A Customer

I only finished Gilb's "Magic of Blood" a few days ago and yesterday went out and purchased his novel. I read it without stopping. I felt like I had read a Camus or Beckett set in a border town. His novel is not much like the stories, the subject of this being darker and deeper, and about people who are YMCA residents, people with almost no where else to go. The novel reads smooth and you don't even know something is happening to you until you have finished it. Amazing. A review (above) calls this work "slight"! The novel is not a mixed drink. It's straight bourbon, cognac, or tequila.

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's Not The Usual Novel, September 14, 2000

By A Customer

I've become pretty blase with most novels that I read. They are stylistically the same so often, with a lot of phony action or angst that I'm supposed to know in my soul or some such. To me those are the usual middle-class to rich kid books with clever inventiveness attached. But a couple of weeks ago I came across a New Yorker that had an essay by Dagoberto Gilb that was so beautiful to read that I decided to go out and buy his books. At first I wasn't sure waht his novel wanted to do, where it was going, but then I realized I wasn't supposed to care about that. it's about as character drawn and plot driven as a poem. The language at first seems unpolished, but it only seems that way. This is a really well written book that made me think about more than just El Paso, Texas and the Mexican border. It reminded me of the book "The Stranger" by Camus--when I was done both, I felt a similar way.

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a well-written tale, December 28, 2001

By	Kirk Alex - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Gilb can write. I've always gone for writers who had to come up the hard way, had their ups and downs, never had it easy, never had anything handed to them on a silver platter, so Gilb is somebody I would like right off the bat. I admire the man's accomplishments. There's no trickery here. Gilb takes his time and tells his tale in his own, unique style. I also read THE MAGIC OF BLOOD and liked that as well. Looking forward to other works by this fine writer. I gave it five stars .