SEEING THE WORLD THROUGH BOOKS

Main character Eduardo, who has a college education, has been assigned to work for a year with people who cannot read, either for physical or emotional reasons. Seven families are assigned to him, and he must read to each of them for one hour each week. His biggest problem is that he gets tired of reading shortly after he starts each book, and his listeners, disinterested in the selections chosen for them, become bored as he is. The characters include a ventriloquist and his brother, a deaf family with children who can hear, a crippled woman who prefers Daphne du Maurier to Henry James, and a host of others who select different books from those chosen for the program. Poetry becomes a turning point for some, including Eduardo, as all try to deal with the social and political changes in Cuernavaca, where crime is on the upswing. Full of energy, humor, literary references, and themes about why we read and what we read, this book also includes a love story (or two), death, and personal growth – something for everyone. This book is WINNER of Mexico’s highest literary award.

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Set in French Guinea this “tasty comedy of manners,” as Paris Match describes it, features Aurel Timescu as its strange antihero, a former Romanian now working for the consular service of the Embassy of France in French Guinea. When an emergency at the marina brings him, the local police, the yacht club employees, the African police, and hordes of spectators to the scene, Aurel learns that a man named Jacques Mayères, who had been staying at the marina for six months has been found hanging by one foot from the mainsail halyard, shot in the chest at point blank range. Aurel has always wanted to be involved in police work, and he quickly arranges to get a computer with internet connection, which he immediately puts to use to gain information about the victim and his family. Clues regarding the crime begin to emerge from all the many sources investigating the Mayères murder, and the cast of characters grows. Eventually, the elaborate conclusion resolves the open issues, solves the murder, and sets everything to rest. The novel has only a small amount of real action, however. The reader does not “live through” the events. Instead, s/he lives through Aurel’s narration – his wryly distorted version of the action, as told by one of the strangest “heroes” ever leading a murder investigation.

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