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Searching... Verulam Library | LOPE | English Fiction | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
The award-winning author of The Gifted Gabaldón Sisters returns with a new novel about a woman who craves solitude, only to find family more fulfilling.
In Buddhism, there is a place where hungry souls gather between lives awaiting rebirth so they can finally satisfy the desires that haunt them.
In the San Fernando Valley, that place is Marina Lucero's house.
The Realm of Hungry Spirits
For Marina Lucero, whose father transformed his life through meditation and whose mother gave hers to a Carmelite convent, spirituality should come easily. It doesn't. After a devastating relationship leaves her feeling lost and alone, she opens her home to a collection of wayward souls-- the abused woman next door and her alcoholic sister, her aimless nephew and his broken-hearted best friend. Her house now full but her heart still empty, Marina then turns to the wisdom of Gandhi, the Dalai Lama, even a Santeria priest who wants to cleanse her home.
As Marina struggles to balance the disappointments and delights of daily life, she'll learn that, when it comes to inner peace and those we love, a little chaos can lead to a lot of happiness.
Author Notes
Lorraine López is a Professor of English in the Creative Writing Program at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. She won the 2003 Independent Publishers Book Award for Multicultural Fiction, awarded by the Jenkins Group, for Soy la Avon Lady and other Stories . The same work also won the 2003 Latino Book Award for Short Stories, awarded by the Latino Literary Hall of Fame. In 2001, López was awarded the Inaugural Miguel Marmol Prize for Fiction, selected by Sandra Cisneros and awarded by Curbstone Press, for a first book-length work of fiction of a Latino writer.
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In Lopez's second novel, 33-year-old schoolteacher Marina Lucero struggles to free herself from a demanding gaggle of friends and family. Skeptical of religion because of her zealot parents, Marina tries to draw spiritual guidance from the Dalai Lama and Gandhi, but selfless generosity is a constant struggle when an endless parade of down-on-their-luck sycophants turn to her for support. An abused next-door neighbor, a shiftless nephew, a bereaved stepdaughter, and a self-absorbed younger sister are among the needy who find their way to Marina's open door. Rudy, Marina's ex-boyfriend, who dumped her on Valentine's Day, reappears with a laundry list of desires while Rudy's best friend, a self-styled Santeria priest, threatens her with the "evil eye" unless she gives him a character reference. Tragedies major and minor pile up, and Marina starts to feel as though she might, indeed, have been cursed. But she resolves to perform her own self-styled spiritual cleansing and reclaim her life. Through snappy dialogue and rich detail, Lopez ( The Gifted Gabaldon Sisters) creates characters who are lovable even at their most irritating, and the perpetually ridiculous demands of Marina's "hungry spirits" provide moments of hilarious dark comedy-but the overall buildup of grievances becomes repetitive, and Marina doesn't evolve much over the course of the story. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Middle-school ESL teacher Marina Lucero's heart is so big that she's host to a whole realm of the hungry spirits, in the words of one of her suitors. Inspired by Gandhi, whose picture she's hung in the bathroom of her San Fernando Valley home, she houses her nephew, who's been thrown out by his parents; the boyfriend her younger sister dumped; and her next-door neighbor, who is physically abused by her husband. When the infant son of Marina's longtime boyfriend's daughter dies of a congenital disease, it's Marina who's a presence as the baby fails, not her now ex-boyfriend. Even when the palpable desire for peace compels her to throw out her boarders, who have come to include her neighbor's sister, she soon relents, and when she learns the truth about the mother she believed had gone into a convent, she understands. This story of a faith-propelled, irrepressible Chicana bursts with life as it comes to an eminently satisfying, all-encompassing conclusion. López, author of The Gifted Gabaldón Sisters (2008), shows good storytelling skills once again.--Leber, Michele Copyright 2010 Booklist