Customer Reviews

The Moon Child

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After reading The Moon Child, a first novel by Alex Roces, the reader is left in complete awe. From beginning to end it is hard to believe such a wonderful cuento has been woven by a first time novelist. It has the feel and texture of an ancient myth or a biblical parable. Moon Child is a massive story made up of a tiny histories. The way they twist around themselves, interweaving past and present is like the branches of Roces's balete tree. The images burst forth from the pages sometimes knarled and sour like the tamarind or ripe with golden sheen like everlasting roses. They sit on the reader's eyelid long after the page has been turned. Of mythic proportions, readers have not been so thoroughly swept away into a world were anything truly can happen since Gabrial Garcia Marquez's 100 years of Solitude. Honestly a magnificent piece of work!
The Moon Child is the story of a baby girl who is left in the forest to be raised by a hermetic old woman said to be a witch. Maria, the child, grows up to be quite different then anyone in the barrio has ever known. An ancient power courses through her blood that shimmers on her skin and causes all who come in contact to be affected by her. She represents everything the villagers fear and desire. The story takes place on the cusp of ancient Mexico's ravishing by Western culture. The realized propriety backed by years of tradition is slowly upset as the very first breaths of Christianity (or something like it) slowly seep into the huts of the moon people.
Roces has a Biblical style of storytelling. Questions are answered in parable form where the actions of the characters in the legends teach the lessons the reader needs to better understand the people of the barrio and of the other world it borders on. The enrapturing language of a meticulous folkloric style captures and leads the reader through an unforgettable tale of love and betrayal. It questions the price of love, the loving of one who doesn't love you back, of sacrifices in the name of love, the love of gods with their blessings and curses and the frailty of human desire.
Throughout the novel Roces is faithful to his symbolist language building up an incredible mythic past for his characters to support the even more amazing present. He weaves the fanciful nearly effortlessly and seamless with the humdrum. For instance an old bruja arrives in the woods on the edge of the barrio carried by a tornado and a deathly handsome flutist has the power to lure women from their husbands' beds into his. The fantastic is juxtaposed against the subtle tactile human minutia that connects the reader to the sensory feelings of humanity.

Like the aging healer Lucila, Maria was abandoned as a baby. Lucila found her and raised her as her own, teaching her "daughter" how to use herbs to heal the nearby villagers in spite of being outcasts, undesirables and even physically abused for not knowing their lineage. Lucila also knows that her ward has power as the MOON CHILD.

Maria befriends all the spirits, flora and fauna of her forestry home, but is uncomfortable with humans except for her "mother". The barrio Captain Arturo falls in love with Maria, but she initially shies away from him until he persuades her that they belong together and he would never purposely hurt her. They move into a home together not realizing buried beneath is the grave of Maya, a forest mortal maltreated by the villagers whom she cursed before dying. Additionally, Pacita, who loves Arturo, plans to destroy his relationship with Maria. At about the same time, Juanito comes to the forest playing the flute like a God as he hypnotizes all the women in a search for a soul. He may have found his soul when he falls in love with Maria.

This delightful romantic fantasy that in some ways feels like A Midsummer Night's Dream focuses on the need for belonging through nurturing and love. Several key protagonists behave even spitefully due to loving someone else though in some cases it is unrequited. The fantasy elements enhance the basic need to have someone love you. Though clearly Maria's tale, the support cast, (whether magical or human, kind or enviously desperate) enchant the audience in search of the "elusive butterfly of love".

Harriet Klausner