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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Oven birds, August 19, 2004
This review is from: Parrot in the Oven: Mi vida (Paperback)
It's hard to review a book that fairly reeks of excellent prose. When you encounter a really GOOD writer, the temptation is to read the pretty words and pay little to no attention to the plot. Victor Martinez fits this category perfectly. Reading, "Parrot in the Oven" is difficult if only because the descriptions in the story are pitch perfect every time. I found myself so continually overwhelmed by the lush characters and interesting metaphors that I would completely forget to pay attention to the narrative and plot. Fortunately, in the case of this particular book, they were perfectly up to snuff.
The tale follows the life and realistic adventures of Mexican-American Manuel Hernandez. Manuel's a good kid. He has a slacker older brother, an older sister that flirts with danger, and a baby sibling that doesn't understand the ways of the world just yet. His father is unemployed leaving him regularly drunk and belligerent. His mother, not quite up to facing the problems surrounding her, stays by his side despite the effects of his actions on the kids. But mostly this is Manny's story. It's a look at a sometimes painful adolescence and the world of classism and racism in which everyone lives. That and it's a beautiful read.
I'll give you a taste of what I'm talking about. For example, after doing painful yard work with his brother the book reads, "When we stopped, finally, the sun was prickling like a hot rash on the back of my neck, and a piece of lava was wedged in my spine. My brother's face was swollen and burnished as a new penny". Another favorite passage of mine speaks of Manny's sister's friend. "She was in love with Nardo, but he didn't pay her any mind, mostly because blocks of fat sagged on her hips like a belt of thick Bibles". Descriptions like these don't appear out of thin air. It takes a skilled eye with a sense of humor to come up with such passages.
As I mentioned before, it would have been easy for Martinez to rest on his descriptive selections and pay little or no attention to character development and plot. Fortunately, this is not the case. While the plot is less a single tale of a boy becoming a man and more a series of significant vignettes in that boy's life, it still is a stunning piece of work. There are elements of painful realism in this tale, such as Manny's father attempting to shoot his mother in a drunken stupor and his mom defending that same husband to the police moments later. Characters act stupidly, nobly, or a little bit of both from time to time. The best way to determine how well you'll understand this story is to read the first chapter. If you finish it and don't feel that the author is monumentally gifted, you may as well move on and not bother with the rest of the book. Yet I'm confident when I say that people who don't recognize this book's beauty will be few and far between.
Great writing deserves a great audience. As it is, "Parrot in the Oven" is supposedly a teen novel. Don't let that discourage you (especially if you're a teen). The book is just as deeply satisfying and wonderfully written as any adult book out there today. After all, they say that if "Catcher in the Rye" was written today it would be published as a teen novel. If you're looking for a book that will wow you with its prose, this is the tale to purchase. A stunning and honest accomplishment.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Lacking Plot, February 14, 2007
This review is from: Parrot in the Oven: Mi vida (Paperback)
Manuel is fourteen years old and living close to the Mexican border. He is Mexican-American himself. His life is full of conflicts, from his father who is alcoholic and abusive and can't seem to keep a job, to his passive mother who lets herself be scared and abused, to his three siblings.
This books is about Manuel's struggle to find himself and to figure out his life. It takes the reader on a journey through about a year in Manuel's life, and we get to see the things he interacts with daily, from his family situation to the bullies who live on his street, to the other people who surround him. Even though he sometimes has problems, like when he is invited to a party full of all white kids and things start to go bad, Manuel always manages to keep his head on his shoulders and get through things okay. Even though his family is dysfunctional, the reader is able to see some good in them.
The language in this book is beautiful; the author has a gift for stringing together very poetic sentences. However, there wasn't any sort of cohesive storyline. I kept trying to wrestle the individual parts of the story into a plot, and was frustrated when they remained disjointed until the end.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Parrot In The Oven, December 15, 2001
This review is from: Parrot in the Oven: Mi vida (Paperback)
Manny Hernandez is a fourteen-year-old boy who is struggling in life to become someone. As hard as he tries it's hard for him because he has to live with an alcoholic father, worried mother, annoying sister and his older brother who can't get a job anywhere (and when he does get a job he loses it instantly). In Manny's neighborhood it's not easy to become someone, especially if you're a good kid like Manny. In the neighborhood he lives in you have to be in a gang to be known. The gangs around there are serious law breaking gangs. Most of the kids in the gangs steal old ladies purses, rob grocery stores, and steal cars. Manny is more of a nice guy that would never hurt a fly (not really gang material). In this story Manny has to experience many stressful events. Manny is beat up by kids at school, his sister is having problems with her pregnancy that none knows about, his mother worries about his dad and the family all the time, and both his brother and father are gone from the house day and night drinking. Over time Manny learns to deal with these events but not easily. Manny tries many different solutions. He tried joining the boxing team but that didn't work, he tried hanging out with older kids to try to make new friends but that didn't work and he tried to join a gang but that was the worst of them all. I will let you find out what happens to Manny yourselves. Enjoy!
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