Mrs. Vargas and the Dead Naturalist [Hardcover]

Kathleen Alcalá (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 1993

14 stories set in Mexico & the Southwest US

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This brief collection of short stories set in Mexico and Southern California exudes a seemingly effortless charm, piquing the palate with a modicum of Latin-style spice. Alcala understands the necessary understatement of magical realism. In one tale, a mild archbishop leaps off a balcony on impulse and soars above the village, waving to those below. He is particularly pleased that no one can smell his foul body odor from the distance. Many of the stories are mysteries of sorts, pivoting on unexpected, ironic turns of events yet moving methodically toward resolution. A fortune teller reveals the immediate future to a wild young man. "You are going very fast . . . with a powerful man, a dangerous man . . . holding you against your will." When the youth angrily demands his money back, the police are called, drugs are discovered and the prophecy comes true. Other stories describe family traumas: a wife mistakes her husband's lust for gold for an affair with another woman; one of two elderly sisters visits with the dead and spends leisurely hours in purgatory. This is Alcala's first book, by turns touching, entertaining and surprising, and uniquely her own.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

From Kirkus Reviews

Fantasies abound in this first story collection from Seattle- based Alcal , who moves as subtly across the border between the US and Mexico as between the real and surreal, probing desperate lives of women under duress, and their dubious refuge of dreams. Fourteen tales combine to produce a distinctive and consistent worldview, in which women of all ages and a few men are caught in the webs of their own imaginings as they cope with the vagaries of an often drab existence. The title story brings an old Anglo to the door of Mrs. Vargas, who is expecting a famous naturalist as her guest while he studies a local bird, said to be a harbinger of death. Dying on the moment of his arrival, his identity is opened to doubt when the real scientist arrives and Mrs. Vargas is left to contend with a ghost seeking a portfolio of the dead man's bird drawings. Birds figure prominently elsewhere, as in ``The Canary Singer''--which features a woman with the remarkable ability to sing like a bird, a gift that takes her far from a humble family origin holding the secret of her gift--or ``Flora's Complaint,'' in which the arrival of a black swan on the lawn of Flora's southern California home gives her an outlet for her countless dissatisfactions, but the bond between them proves stronger than death, so she's condemned to remain in the bird's custody in the afterlife. Dream worlds full of roses and the presence of dead relatives intermingle with an archbishop's rich fantasy life provided by his ghostwriter, part of a succession of images generating a lush magical reality of considerable strength. An intensely imaginative, often compelling debut. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: CALYX Books (July 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0934971269
• ISBN-13: 978-0934971263
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,304,036 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Kathleen Alcalá's life is all about stories. She is the author of four works of fiction - Mrs. Vargas and the Dead Naturalist; Spirits of the Ordinary; The Flower in the Skull; and Treasures in Heaven - and a collection of essays. Her work is the recipient of a Governor's Writers Award, the Washington State Book Award, a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, and a Western States Book Award, among others. Kathleen teaches Creative Writing in the Low Residency MFA program at the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts on Whidbey Island. Two of her stories are included in the recent Norton Anthology of Latino Literature. More at www.kathleenalcala.com.

"I began writing as a way to explain the world to myself. So much family history did not match the 'official' history of the Southwest, that I had to become an explorer, an adventurer, an ethnographer, a scholar and a writer in order to discover who we were and who we are today. I believe that writing, in and of itself, is a political act, and that the artistic cannot be separated from the political. Writing makes the invisible, visible; the silent, audible; the absent, present."

Quotes:

This is a book of wonders. Each story unfolds with humor and simplicity and perfect naturalness into something original and totally unpredictable. Not one tale is like another, yet all together they form a beautiful whole, a world where one would like to stay forever. The kingdoms of Borges and Garcia Marquez lie just over the horizon, but this landscape of desert towns and dreaming hearts, of lost sisters and ghost scientists, canary singers and road readers, is Alcalá-land. It lies across the border between the living and the dead, across all the borders - a true new world.
- Ursula K. LeGuin on Mrs. Vargas and the Dead Naturalist

Kathleen Alcalá captures the essence of the magical realism in her work. Her stories convincingly move the reader from one reality to the other. Kathleen's craft illuminates the souls of her characters: the Mexican women who carry the universe in their hearts.

- Rudolfo Anaya

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars magical realism captured, May 25, 2000

By 

Roseanne Montillo - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mrs. Vargas and the Dead Naturalist (Paperback)

While for some a bicultural background might be a bother, for Kathleen Alcala it is a blessing. Her Latin-American background has helped her complete a collection of short stories that is both funny, and magical. Her prose is very poetic and captivating, much like other Latin-American author such as Puerto Rico's Rosario Ferre, and of course, Gabriel Garcia-Marquez. Each story is short, told by several first-person narrators, all of them struggling to come to terms with strange, funny, sometimes heartbreaking events of daily life, made even more sorrowful by the conflict of trying to deal with two different cultures, each of them striving to be the dominating one. As a collection, each story could be described as a precious individual pearl, capable of standing on its own, but string them all together and you have a stunning necklace. I highly reccomend this book

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars magical realism captured, May 25, 2000

By 

Roseanne Montillo - See all my reviews

This review is from: Mrs. Vargas and the Dead Naturalist (Paperback)

While for some a bicultural background might be a bother, for Kathleen Alcala it is a blessing. Her Latin-American background has helped her complete a collection of short stories that is both funny, and magical. Her prose is very poetic and captivating, much like other Latin-American author such as Puerto Rico's Rosario Ferre, and of course, Gabriel Garcia-Marquez. Each story is short, told by several first-person narrators, all of them struggling to come to terms with strange, funny, sometimes heartbreaking events of daily life, made even more sorrowful by the conflict of trying to deal with two different cultures, each of them striving to be the dominating one. As a collection, each story could be described as a precious individual pearl, capable of standing on its own, but string them all together and you have a stunning necklace. I highly reccomend this book