Colombian-born Santiago Martinez starts his adult life as a young gay writer living in Spain. Years later, as a university professor in New York City, Santiago is called back to his native Colombia upon the suicide of his sister. There he learns some shocking secrets about his childhood and adolescence and comes to the realization that cherished memories of the past are only illusion.
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Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Jaime Manrique's 1992 Latin Moon in Manhattan is one of the great under-recognized classics of gay male fiction. Now, with Twilight at the Equator Manrique shows himself once again to be both an exquisite writer and profound thinker. Twilight tells the story of Santiago Martinez, a young gay novelist who, after he is forced to deal with his sister's suicide, discovers that his family's past secrets are more than alive in the present, and just as dangerous. Manrique seduces us into believing the myth of the safe past, of secure history, of the happy family even as he begins to dismantle these ideas. Twilight at the Equator is a profoundly moving and beautifully written novel.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
From Kirkus Reviews
Poet and novelist Manrique (Latin Moon in Manhattan, 1992, etc.) returns with further tales of Santiago (Sammy) Martinez, a gay Colombian writer/filmmaker tormented by past and present horrors despite his picaresque, cosmopolitan life. In the first of five sections, Sammy is living an impoverished, bohemian life in the homophobic Madrid of the '70s. Cadging meals, raptly watching Pasolini movies, and posing as a Texan to get English-teaching jobs, he falls in love first with a naive, devoted teenaged boy and then with a worldly friend from Colombia. But Sammy's true purpose is to become ``the Colombian Sylvia Plath''; and in a frantic two weeks, he writes a violent, surrealistic novel designed to shock his family. Manrique's narrative takes a turn for the bizarre as we are plunged into a long, dreamlike fiction-within-a-fiction, apparently part of Sammy's work. In Sammy's tale, a farcically aristocratic Colombian diplomat smothers his dying father, whose body is stolen from the funeral parlor during the raucous, sex-and-death-suffused atmosphere of Carnival. Some autobiographical links between Sammy and his creation become apparent in subsequent sections, as Sammy explores his own feelings about illness, family, and his native country. Many years later, he finds work as a film professor in New York. Working on a documentary about the homeless, he can only watch helplessly as a brilliant student succumbs to crack addiction while chronicling his self-destruction in a film inspired by Kafka's ``Hunger Artist.'' In the last major episode here, Sammy finally returns to Colombia. As he visits friends and family, Sammy confronts Colombia's tumultuous politics, remembers past events both joyous and terrible, and uncovers his druglord uncle's brutal history. The material is dark and the narrative disjointed, but Manrique handles his complicated story with deftness and ready humor. A powerful take on various forms of violence, suicide, political repression, sexual abuse, and the possibility of transcending them through love and art. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
--This text refers to the
Hardcover
edition.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Corruption and search for a true identity,
This review is from: Twilight at the Equator (Hardcover)
I must confess I bought this book because I truly enjoyed Latin Moon over Manhattan and I wasn't dissapointed. In the book Manrique leads us through a tumultuos Spain visit, a journey back to Colombia and the adventures of the main character. Manrique has a very good sense of humor and although he shows how corruption and power have spoiled some of his characters, he still brings out the warmth of the more real people that were a part of his childhood, giving us a clear glimpse at a life in Colombia that will not last forever. A very good book.
5.0 out of 5 stars
A novel based in personal experience and ties with the community,
By
This review is from: Twilight at the Equator (Hardcover)
I felt compelled to write this review, because the last reviewer of this book made an imprecise statement about it. Jaime Manrique fashioned the novel from stories that his own family told him. He spent much of his time visiting El Banco and recording in his journal not only the personal stories of his family's past, but also keeping detailed descriptions of the place. Manrique has great vision and beautiful writing; don't allow another reader's misperceptions and parochial visions keep you from checking out this book if you are interested in the subject matter or the writer.
5.0 out of 5 stars
A beautifully written and powerful set of observations,
By Stephen O. Murray "Stephen O. Murray" (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE) (REAL NAME)
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This review is from: Twilight at the Equator (Hardcover)
Not quite a novel, this collection of (surely) autobiographical stories shows it gay emigre narrator trying to make sense of a variegated family in Colombia and New York City, young love in Spain, and a studentof his who films his own starvation. There is plenty of black comedy along with something close to despair about the culture of violence in Colombia. The range of family members is considerable--as full as the oeuvre of García Marquez, the most famous of Colombian writers. It is as powerful (albeit more loosely structured) than Latin Moon in Manhattan, which is to say very powerful and moving -- not to neglect often hilarious.
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