Malinche: A Novel [BARGAIN PRICE] (Hardcover)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: Hernán Cortés, Pánfilo de Narváez, Laura Esquivel, Lord Quetzalcóatl, Valley of Anáhuac (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Through the eyes of the historical native woman of the novel's title, Esquivel (Like Water for Chocolate) reveals the defeat and destruction of Montezuma's 16th-century Mexicas empire at the hands of Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés. Malinche, also called Malinalli, was sold into slavery as a child and later became "The Tongue," Cortés's interpreter and lover—remembered by history as a traitor for her contribution to the brutal Spanish triumph. In her lyrical but flawed fifth novel, Esquivel details richly imagined complications for a woman trapped between the ancient Mexicas civilization and the Spaniards. Esquivel revels in descriptions of the role of ancient gods in native life and Malinalli's theological musings on the similarities between her belief system and Christianity. But what the book offers in anthropological specificity, it lacks in narrative immediacy, even while Esquivel also imagines Cortés's point of view. The author also packs the arc of Malinalli's life into a relatively short novel: she bears Cortés an illegitimate son, marries another Spaniard and has a daughter before her sad demise. The resulting disjointed storytelling gives short shrift to this complex heroine, a woman whose role in Mexican history is controversial to this day.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From The Washington Post

It ought to be difficult, if not impossible, to make the Spanish conquest of Mexico lyrical, but Laura Esquivel comes close in her fifth novel, Malinche. This is not a good thing either for history or for literature.

Most readers will remember Esquivel for her first novel, Like Water for Chocolate, the story of how a woman transforms heartbreak into culinary astonishments. That book used recipes and magical realism to explore life in early 20th-century Mexico. In Esquivel's new book, the eponymous heroine encounters her share of heartbreaks, but there's little magical or realist about the process.

Mexican national memory hasn't been kind to La Malinche, the Mexica woman who came into the possession of Hernán Cortés as a slave, learned Spanish and as "The Tongue" -- Cortés's translator -- helped talk Montezuma out of an empire, with ghastly, near-genocidal results. She mediated between the Spaniards and the Mexica (Aztec) people whom Montezuma governed. She also bore Cortés a son, Martin -- the first true mestizo Mexican, or at least the most famous one -- before the conquistador married her off to a much nicer man named Juan Jaramillo, with whom, according to Esquivel's account, she had a daughter.

As far as I can tell -- one of the many shortcomings of Esquivel's book is that it leaves the reader grasping for concrete details -- Malinche was one of the names by which Cortés was sometimes known. It means something like captain, so the captain's translating mistress became La Malinche. Esquivel gives her the birth name of Malinalli, which refers to a sacred grass and also seems to have associations with death.

Esquivel deserves credit for attempting the difficult task of imagining herself into the skin and heart of a woman whom history has found it easy to scorn. Some revisionists have argued that La Malinche saved her people from total destruction because she gave Cortes the chance to negotiate (sometimes) with words instead of swords -- not that he was afraid to use those.

It's unclear whether Esquivel shares this particular revisionist point of view, but then many things in this novel are unclear. We get a few scenes of pillage and massacre, fever dreams that interrupt the story that Esquivel really cares about: one woman's spiritual journey -- to use a cliché that fits too well here.

On the positive side, the novelist treats her heroine with refreshing sympathy. How can you not feel for a 5-year-old girl whose mother, eager to remarry after the death of her first husband, gives her away to slave-traders? All the young Malinalli has to hold on to are memories of her grandmother, a loving woman rich in the spirituality of Mexica culture. The flashback scenes of Malinalli's time with her grandmother contain some lovely moments of Mexica lore: how to learn the ways of water, fire and stars in order to come closer to god in his many forms; how to use codices -- stories in pictures -- to train the mind and harness memory. But by the time Malinalli travels with Cortés to Tenochtitlan, Montezuma's great capital, her grandmother's gentle, indigenous lyricism has given way to self-aggrandizing, almost New Age escapism.

Take, for instance, the scene in which Malinalli makes a nighttime visit to the sacred plaza at the center of Tenochtitlan, not long after Cortés has taken control of the place. She stands in front of the Stone of the Sun and, instead of fretting about the end of civilization as she knows it, enjoys a moment of insight: "The Sun, the Moon, she herself, and the Stone of the Sun created all that was unique and indivisible and at that moment she understood that the Stone was an image of the invisible, that it was a circle that represented not only the Sun and the Winds, the forces of creation, but the invisible at its center." Too bad about the slaughters perpetrated by Cortés and his men. Such bloody episodes exist in this book mostly to trouble Malinalli's dreams.

Just as problematic is Malinalli's relationship with Cortés. It's rape as destiny. The conquistador strikes her as a short, hairy megalomaniac, but we're also told that she feels some dubious bond with him. In the plaza in Tenochtitlan, for instance, she ponders their experiences together: "It was a confusing time, in which her time and Cortés's time were ineluctably interconnected, laced, tied together. . . . It was an enforced union that she had not decided on but that seemed to mark her always."

The Spanish encounter with Mexico was many things, but "confusing"? I'm tempted to blame the translator for some of the novel's more unfortunate moments, such as Malinalli's realization that "she was tired, extremely tired of Cortés and all his strategies." But the problem surely goes deeper than diction in whatever language. For instance, in an early scene when the hirsute Spaniard "takes" Malinalli for the first time -- on a riverbank, no less -- Esquivel tells us that the pair "looked into each other's eyes and found their destiny and their inevitable union." Are those literary terms for rape?

In its treatment of plot (sketchy) and character (sketchier) and its emphasis on wifty spirituality, Malinche feels half thought out, its heroine an excuse for the author to indulge her meditations on pre-Columbian (or pre-Cortésian) folkways. Esquivel hints that Malinalli is a kind of Virgin of Guadalupe, a figure in whom the blood of warring races mingles together, the mother of the Mexico that will be born out of the clash of cultures. That's a fascinating idea, but in this book it's only an idea. The more Malinalli retreats from history into spirituality, the more she melds into the universe and the vaguer she becomes as a character -- until she's lost entirely in the mists of myth. From conquistador's mouthpiece to author's is not a fate anyone should suffer.

Reviewed by Jennifer Howard
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 208 pages
• Publisher: Atria (May 2, 2006)
• ISBN-10: 074329033X
• ASIN: B001QFY270
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,099,744 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not the perfect book, but well worth the time spent, August 26, 2006

By	Ratmammy "The Ratmammy" (Ratmammy's Town, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Malinche: A Novel (Hardcover)

MALINCHE by Laura Esquivel
August 26, 2006

Rating: 4 Stars


For those who enjoy historical fiction, MALINCHE is a captivating novel that takes the myth of Malinche (Malinalli) and recreates her story - the woman who aided Hernan Cortes in the demise of the Aztec Empire during the 1500's. For those who have read and loved LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE, MALINCHE is a different type of novel, a story that is based on history. Malinalli is considered a traitor in the history books, but Esquivel writes her main character in a way that will garner sympathy from the reader, a different viewpoint of the woman who was Cortes' right hand man, as she was the translator between the Spaniards and the Aztecs. She is portrayed as an innocent victim, someone who made poor choices and lived to regret them.

Starting with Malinalli's early years, MALINCHE traces her story from birth, to childhood, to her life as a slave. The novel is filled with myths and fables, and for those who love those little extras, the inside cover to the hardcover book displays a pictograph story of the entire novel, similar to those that were drawn back in the 1500's.

MALINCHE transforms Malinalli into a heroine of sorts, while in truth the word malinchista today means traitor. But in this novel, she is portrayed as a woman who was torn between two worlds, a woman who tried to save herself but at the save time, was hoping to destroy the Aztecs and their barbaric human sacrifices. I didn't feel that this was the perfect book, but it was definitely time not wasted, as I learned a little bit of history that I had not known about before, and was entertained with the fascinating (fictionalized) story of Malinalli, the woman who helped destroy the Aztecs.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars "The search for the gods is the search for oneself", June 5, 2006

By	William Peschel (Hershey, PA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Malinche: A Novel (Hardcover)

Nearly five centuries after she helped Hernan Cortes conquer the Aztec Empire, Malinche is still a controversial figure in Mexican history.

A noble-born child sold into slavery by her mother, she used her unusual ability as a linguist to enable the Spanish to negotiate alliances with the native tribes against the Aztec Emperor Montezuma. As a result, she's reviled as a traitor to her people and, because she was Cortes' mistress and bore him a son, regarded as the symbolic mother of the Mexican people.

In "Malinche," Laura Esquivel reimagines her in this latter role, as a deeply devout woman caught in a clash of civilizations and attempting to make sense of what she experiences.

Because so little is known about Malinche's life, Esquivel gives her imagination free play, renaming her heroine Malinalli and giving her a grandmother who teaches her reverence for the gods and the natural world.

Malinalli's beliefs are challenged when she is given to the Spanish, where her beauty and linguistic gifts are recognized, and she becomes Cortes' translator.

At first, she sees him as the personification of Quetzalcoatl, the benevolent god who will put an end to human sacrifice and free her people. But the massacre of a town and his hunger for gold disillusions her, and her baptism into Roman Catholicism challenges her to integrate the two belief systems.

"Malinche" is a short novel, unusual in that Malinalli spends much of it reflecting on her beliefs or recalling scenes from her childhood. The result is a cool narrative that tells of awful events but is emotionally distant.

"The search for the gods is the search for oneself," Esquivel writes, and in the end, Malinalli's quest for her gods remains firmly within herself.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Love Story from the Past, May 5, 2006

By	Jamieson Villeneuve "Author at Large" (Ottawa Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Malinche: A Novel (Hardcover)

I have read everything that Laura Esquivel has written. Her novels are always filled with images and with passion, imagination and with love. While Malinche is not the best book she has written (that spot is held by Like Water for Chocolate and The Law of Love) it is still one amazing read.

Malinche, given away at an early age, finds herself the interpretor of Cortez, who does not speak the native Aztec tongue. Malinche sees Cortez as the re-embodiment of their Aztec lord and stands by his side, even when it looks as if he is intent on slaughtering the Aztec people.

After being taken over by the Mexicans, this is the last thing that Malinche wants. She believes him when he says that he has no intention to engage in the mindless slaughter of her people and a love begins to grow between the two. A love so passionate that it threatens to blind Malinche to the truth about who Cortez really is and what he intends to do.

This novel didn't have the flow of her other books; it felt a liiiitle stilted, as if it were trying to find its pace well into the short book. But nevertheless, it is a beautiful read. Part novel, part commentary on life, part philosophy text book, Malinche is sure to delight with words and with a pure love that may survive all that threatens to distroy it.

Most striking of all is the Codex's included with the novel. The Aztecs used Codexs (pictures drawn in sequence) to tell stories and one is here for us to see. Some of the pictures are scattered through out the novel to divide the chapters; but it is the books dust jacket that is the true masterpiece.

If you unfold it, you will be able to follow the love story of Cortez and Malinche without words. The art is beautiful (drawn by Esquivel's own nephew) and is a testament to the Aztec people and a grand love affair.

Read and be enlightened.

Jamieson Wolf