2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Brilliant Take on Life in New Mexico, May 6, 2004
This review is from: In the River Province: Stories (Paperback)
First, a disclaimer: I am acquainted with Ms. Sandlin, as she was once a colleague. But she's a fellow writer, so I was equally prepared to see, and to enjoy, either her failure or her success. That's two different species of enjoyment, however, and so I can say I was immensely pleased to read "In the River Province" for all the reasons that would do me credit.
"In the River Province" is Lisa Sandlin's third collection of short stories, each better than the one before it, and this one matchless in its artistry and its vivid depiction of the lives of Anglo and Hispanic inhabitants of New Mexico both contemporary and historical. Like some literary descendant of Chaucer, she uses the annual pilgrimage from Santa Fe to the village of Chimayo as the focal point of three stories ("'Orita on the Road to Chimayo," "Everything Moves," and "I Loved You Then, I Love You Still"); not surprisingly, while on their hegira the protagonists in those stories search their souls and rearrange the way they define themselves, but introspection never bogs the stories down and they stay vividly active in the colorful present moment of the pilgrimage and of their companions and their lives. Two other stories, likewise set in Santa Fe, round out the portrait of life in that city - "Night Class" contains a long passage about the terrors of teaching for the first time that everyone who has stepped in front of a class will readily identify with. "Another Exciting Day in Santa Fe" celebrates a long friendship between a man and a woman, a rare thing to see and a pleasure to watch unfold.
But the highest peak in this Sangre de Christo range is far and away the novella entitled "The Saint of Bilocation," a marvelously ambitious, moving, and suspenseful account by a New Mexican priest who has been called back to Spain in 1630 to interview a nun who claims to be traveling miraculously to Santa Fe without transporting her body, where she allegedly works wonders, converting the Indian population. Based on historical documents by Fray Antonio Jimenez Vera, who worked with New Mexico's indigenous peoples for decades, the novella follows his fictional representation as he arrives in Spain properly skeptical yet willing to concede the possibility of the nun's miraculous claim. The story poses a vivid contrast and tension between practical religious practice and mystical faith, between reason and the imagination, and it speaks to our time very well. Lisa Sandlin makes Fray Antonio's mission itself a suspenseful undertaking (is the abbess Sor Maria de Agreda a saint or a charlatan?), and a brilliant coda to the story is slyly and meaningfully ambiguous.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A great read, December 29, 2004
This review is from: In the River Province: Stories (Paperback)
Lisa Sandlin's new collection is worth two reads. I just reread it and love the world we enter. It's a place that's mystical and spiritual and filled with salt of the earth characters who are searching for more from life. I'm reminded of Isabel Allende and Gabriel Garcia Marquez with their magical realism. Sandlin's third collection is beautifully written, deep and multilayered in complex characters and a joy to read and savor.Keep your eye on Lisa Sandlin. She's a writer worth knowing and watching. If you haven't heard of her, she has two other collections--The Famous Thing About Death and Message to the Nurse of Dreams--worth reading. Thank you, Lisa, for your stories. I'm sure you will give us another collection soon.
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