So Far from God: A Novel [Hardcover]

Ana Castillo (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1993

Sofia and her daughters, Fe, Esperanza, Caridad, and la Loca, endure hardship and enjoy love in the sleepy New Mexico hamlet of Tome, where the comic and the horrific, the real and the supernatural, reside. 15,000 first printing. Tour.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Castillo's ( Sapogonia ) inventive but not entirely cohesive novel about the fortunes of a contemporary Chicana family in the village of Tome, N.M., reveals its main concerns at once. Sofi's three-year-old daughter dies in a horrifying epileptic fit but is resurrected (and even levitates) at her own funeral, reporting firsthand acquaintance with hell, purgatory and heaven. Magic and divine intervention in varying ways touch each of Sofi's three other daughters: the eldest, mainstreamed yuppie Esperanza; Caridad, whose path leads toward folk mysticism; and the more mundane Fe, who--seized with a screaming convulsion when her fiance jilts her--is brought to silence only months later through the intercession of the resurrected youngest sister, "Loca." Castillo takes a page from the magical realist school of Latin American fiction, but one senses the North American component of this Chicana voice: in her work, occult phenomena are literal, not symbolic; life is traumatic and brutal--as are men--but death is merely tentative. She sounds a secondary note as a proponent of feminism and social justice, but her hand falters when she attempts to blend the formation of an artisans' cooperative or an industrial toxins scandal into a universe of magical healings and manifestations. Castillo is also a critic, a translator and a poet.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

This masterfully written novel by the author of The Mixquiahuala Letters (Anchor: Doubleday, 1992) tells the story of Sofia and her four daughters. The Hispanic family lives in Tome, New Mexico, a small, quiet town whose inhabitants nonetheless directly deal with such current social issues as AIDS, industrial pollution, the volatile political situation in the Middle East, poor people's struggle for self - sufficiency, and the current interest in alternate spirituality and natural medicine. Although filled with tragic events, the narrative also offers hope in its portrayal of successful journeys toward wholeness by each of the five women. Each chapter stands on its own as a complete story, but readers won't be satisfied until they've finished the entire skillfully constructed book. Highly recommended for collections with demand for Hispanic, women's, or spiritual literature.
- Sherri Cutler, Children's Memorial Hosp. Lib., Chicago
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 251 pages
• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc; First Edition edition (May 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393034909
• ISBN-13: 978-0393034905
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (40 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #979,804 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A sensuous reading experience, August 23, 2000

By 

Irene Lara (Berkeley) - See all my reviews

This review is from: So Far from God (Mass Market Paperback)

I have read this wonderful story about relationships between women, politics, and spirituality at least four times. The first time, I devoured most of the lyrical dialogue and marvelous images during a college all-nighter. Hungry for voices that reminded me of family, I couldn't put the book down!

Most recently, I have asked my students to read this novel at the beginning of the UC Berkeley course, "Redefining Chicana and Latina Health: Body, Mind, and Spirit." It always creates a space to discuss health and healing in relation to culture, environmental racism, labor exploitation, sexism, homophobia, faith, and political organizing . Ana Castillo's characters ask us to consider the costs of internalizing oppression, as well as present transformative ways of being in the world. A hopeful novel about the need for social change and personal transformation, it deals with the challenges many of us experience across difference in the United States.

Instead of describing this story as "magical realism," I prefer the more accurate translation of the Carribean and South American consciousness and style of representation called "lo real maravilloso" - So Far From God is about the "marvelous real." Reading this book is a sensuous experience that engages your physical body, as well as your mind and soul.

33 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Extraordinarily mystical --very unusual story., March 23, 2002

By 

David J. Gannon (San Antonio, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: So Far from God (Mass Market Paperback)

Hispanic writing today seems to fall within three distinct categories, i.e., contemporary fiction (mostly urban in context), historical fiction and mystical fiction. This novel is most emphatically a work of mystical fiction.

Set in Chicana country the story is both down-to-earth and full of unearthly happenings. Its matter-of-fact delivery serves to make the magical believable. When one character is dying of AIDS, a Doctor Tolentino and his wife come to help her. His ministrations involve prayers and cotton wool soaked in holy oil. But then he reaches into La Loca's stomach `maintaining his left "material" hand in the opening, while the right "spirit" hand sought out the maladies' and `pulled out some cystic fibroids and finally a tumour...' The lines between the surgical and the miraculous are blurred and anything seems possible. Castillo uses a direct colloquial style with little regard for punctuation, almost as if the writer is confiding her thoughts directly to the reader. Each chapter is prefaced with a description of what is going to happen next but phrased in such a way as to make the book impossible to put down. For instance: `Of the Hideous Crime of Francisco el Penitente, and his Pathetic Calls Heard Throughout the Countryside as His Body Dangled from a Pinnion like a Crow-Picked Pear; and of the End of Caridad and Her Beloved Emerald Which We Nevertheless Will Refrain from Calling Tragic.'

So Far from God is a tale both tragic and funny; a hymn to women's endurance and to the harshness of their lives. It is a heavily allegorical tale. The novel has Sofia, the embodiment of "wisdom," at its core, a mother who survives the death of her four daughters: Esperanza, Fe, Caridad, and La Loca. The names of the first three daughters denote the three major Christian ideals. However, in the cruelest of ironies, the destiny of each of these characters is the antithesis of the ideal the name represents.

Esperanza, the most liberated of the sisters, devotes the energy of her college years to the Chicano Movement. She lives her life as a glowing example of La Raza Politics, working to better the lives of her people. But her death as a television reporter covering the Gulf Crisis is utterly meaningless. The reader is left without any hope or, better yet, "Esperanza," of finding redemption in this character's demise.
Fe, the sister who most subscribes to the traditions of her culture, desires nothing more than to participate fully in society's patriarchal mandate for women to marry and serve their husbands.

She does, finally, find a man who will fulfill her dream of marrying: her cousin Casimiro. He is completely devoted to her, and together they plan a blissful future. In order to secure this, however, Fe leaves her safe position at the bank for a higher paying job at an arms manufacturing company. She tackles her work with her usual diligence and earns a promotion. Thus, her faith in the American Way of Life is rewarded. This "promotion," however, proves fatal as the company exposes her to a hazardous chemical that causes her death from cancer. In the end, the faith that Fe places in the basic tenets of society and its culture completely fails her. Thus, faith also becomes meaningless.

Caridad, after being abandoned by her husband, became known for "loving anyone she met at the bars who vaguely resembled Memo" (27). Because of her promiscuous life, she is brutally raped and disfigured by a mysterious and misogynist spirit identity known as the "malogra." In this manner, Caridad's charity towards men is severely punished. However, she heals miraculously and from that moment on, she no longer has an interest in men. Caridad becomes an apprentice curandera, and during a religious pilgrimage with her mentor, she spots a woman with whom she instantly falls in love. Caridad never reconciles herself with her homosexual feelings until she suddenly and dramatically leaps off of a cliff while holding hands with Esmeralda, the object of her affection, as they are being pursued by Francisco el Penitente, Caridad's obsessed stalker. Those who witness the jump search for the bodies, but they are never found.

La Loca is without question the most intriguing of the sisters. Dead at age three, she resurrects and is immediately believed to possess miraculous powers. The residents of Tome accept the young girl's return from the dead as being of a divine nature and they dub her "La Loca Santa." Following her return, however, she shuns human contact and only lets her mother touch her. She also rarely speaks, but her resurrection has spoken volumes for her. La Loca is the embodiment of a miracle; she cannot be preoccupied with the mundane task of finding a job, like her sisters. She remains at home, content in her solitude. Her household chores are to tend her animals, keep the house clean, and cook. She does, though, assist in the healing of Fe and Caridad, and she performs abortions for the latter because La Loca instinctively "knew all about a woman's pregnancy cycle". Toward the novel's end, she becomes ill and is diagnosed with the HIV virus, even though she had never participated in any activity commonly associated with its acquisition. Ultimately, La Loca's destiny, like those of her sisters, is to die at an early age. On a surreal death pilgrimage to an Albuquerque hospital, the people canonize her and eventually declare her the patron saint of kitchens, new brides, and progressive grooms. La Loca's life, then, is characterized by her first death, resurrection, contraction of AIDS without human contact, and her canonization. After the deaths of hope, faith, and charity, the three theological ideals of the Church, and the death of what can arguably be construed as the female personification of Jesus Christ in the personage of La Loca, all that remains is Sofia's wisdom.

Sofia has a feckless husband - who suddenly appears after an absence of twenty years - and four daughters who suffer all the indignities known to woman. But she decides to become the Mayor of Tome and goes on to found a workers' co-operative and MOMAS (`Mothers of Martyrs and Saints'). Sofia endures, no, she triumphs - while at the same time retaining her sense of humour.

So Far from God is wacky and powerful. Its humor belies a strong political message - that in a world which deals them many harsh blows, women are still survivors, after death as well as during life.

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I was forced to read this....................... Thank God!, July 22, 1999

By 

Kelly - See all my reviews

This review is from: So Far from God (Mass Market Paperback)

It has been four years since I was obligated to read this novel in my college literature class. I am so pleased that my professor assigned this book. It still holds up today as one of the best I have ever read. Although I come from a white middle-class family in a small white-bread community, I was able to relate to these characters as sisters, as family. I have read this story several times. Even though the pages are tattered and the cover has been ripped off, I will never give this book up to any recycle bin. From page one you will be so engrossed that you will not be able to put it down. You may finish it in one sitting or fall down trying.