Leaving Tabasco: A Novel [Hardcover]

Carmen Boullosa (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 27, 2001

In the tradition of such beloved classics as How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents and Dreaming in Cuban, Carmen Boullosa's Leaving Tabasco is a lovely coming-of-age novel full of humor and touched by magic. Raised by her mother and grandmother in an all-female home with not enough affection but more than enough stories to go around, Delmira Ulloa enters adulthood with a wicked sense of humor and a delightful imagination. Agustini, the village where Delmira grows up, is not an ordinary place -- it is a world where Delmira sees her grandmother floating above the bed when she sleeps, where her grandmother remembers a time when stones turned into water, where during the dry season one can purchase torrential rains at a traveling fair, where her family's elderly serving woman develops stigmata, then disappears completely. As Delmira becomes a woman she will search for the missing stranger who fathered her, and in choosing her own allegiances she will make a choice that will force her to leave home forever. Brimming with the spirit of its irrepressible heroine and the magic of her grandmother's nightly bedtime stories, Leaving Tabasco is a novel of great charm and depth that will remain in its readers' hearts for a long time.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Told in memoir format, this coming-of-age work by Mexican novelist Boullosa (They're Cows, We're Pigs) tracks Delmira from childhood through late adolescence in a small town in Mexico. Delmira's memories alternate with those of her grandmother, a tyrannical household overlord who spins magical tales of witches, revivified lizards, and a woman who dissolves into urine. Grandmother always takes Delmira's mother's side in any dispute, though the mother is ineffectual and wanton. Only Uncle Gustavo, who lives the sophisticated life in Mexico City, and the local teacher take Delmira under their wing. In the end, Delmira is arrested for distributing antigovernment leaflets and is forced to flee to Europe, never to see her hometown again. This novel is full of vivid images, and the combination of realism and folkloric magical realism serves Boullosa well until Delmira returns the narrative to the present, where she relies on sighs rather than substance. Recommended for collections strong in Latin American literature.DHarold Augenbraum, Mercantile Lib. of New York
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Agustini, the small village in Mexico where Delmira Ulloa comes of age in the 1960s, will be familiar to readers of such magic realist writers as Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Isabel Allende. It is a town filled with events both real and fantastical, an unsettling mixture of violence, heartache, and love. Delmira grows up in a household dominated by her strong-willed grandmother, whose nightly stories about Mexico's history and her own childhood comprise a large part of the novel. When other girls of her age and social class leave the village to marry or study abroad, Delmira becomes involved in local politics. As a result, she is forced to leave Agustini for good. Delmira spends the next 30 years in what she believes is the real world, only to discover that reality is largely in the eye of the beholder--something her grandmother could have told her. Boullosa, author of They're Cows, We're Pigs (Grove, 2001) and eight other novels (none of which is available in the U.S.), writes winningly of Delmira's unusual childhood. Nancy Pearl
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press; 1st edition (April 27, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802116841
• ISBN-13: 978-0802116840
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #420,246 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sleepless in Tacoma, April 1, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Leaving Tabasco: A Novel (Hardcover)

I started to read this book at 9 pm one evening and it kept me reading till I finished it at 4 am. At first it seems a folksy tale but its depth becomes apparent when you realize the price a person, especially a young girl with few opportunities except those of her own making, has to pay to live in what is suffocating comfort. The sense of claustrophobia continually grows until an explosion is inevitable. But that too comes with a terrible price. A very powerful book that was easy to read, in an unusually good translation that moves with fluency and grace. As I said, I couldn't put it down.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Challenging material, April 6, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Leaving Tabasco: A Novel (Hardcover)

The challenge in this book is certainly not the easy movement of the narrative (quite something in a translated work) but in facing the impact of a "primal scene" on a young girl's consciousness. Unable to confront the reality of what she sees, she plunges into hallucinations (that we might be tempted to anesthetize as 'magic realism') in order to conceal from herself the impact of her experience--disorders in nature intended to prevent (at least subjectively) the re-occurrence of the disturbing sight. Strong stuff. Not for those with a werak stomach!

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not for those who are sick of magic realism, June 16, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Leaving Tabasco: A Novel (Hardcover)

This book offers more of the same, from the stereotypal chilli pepper on the cover. It will be a pleasant reading for many, but if you are looking for some truly good and groundbreaking fiction, Latin American or otherwise, you should look elsewhere. The characters are trite, the plot predictable, the ending complacent and bland. Perhaps it may seem surprising that more than a few Latin American readers, myself included, are sick of being portrayed as Boullosa, Isabel Allende, Laura Esquivel and many more writers (both men and women) do. Surprising, but true: if magic realism was, about half a century ago, a very lively and fresh way to look at ourselves (and to tackle the problems of our own varied and contradictory heritages), now there is nothing left of that freshness, the "exotic" locales are just a way to lure bored European and American readers, and the many, many imitators of Garcia Marquez and Carpentier are to them as, say, any "Dungeons and Dragons" hack is to the anonymous poet who wrote "Beowulf".