The New York Times Book Review - Kyle Minor
The collection reminds us, again and again, that each of us has only one life, and forces us to confront the biggest questions: Shouldn't that one life matter, shouldn't that life be worth remembering, shouldn't it be worth examining, contemplating, pursuing in understanding, even though all varieties of understanding are so difficult, so time-bound, so provisional? This is a variety of beauty too rare in contemporary literature, a synthesis of material and practice and time and courage and love that must have cost its writer dearly; it's not easy to be so vulnerable so consistently. Quade attempts, page by page, to give up carefully held secrets, to hold them up to the light so we can get at the truth beneath, the existential truth. Perhaps this is as close as we can get to what is sacred in an age in which so many have otherwise rejected the idea of the sacred.
The New York Times - John Williams
Whether told from the perspective of adults or kids, Night at the Fiestas is most notable for conjuring the intensity and mythmaking of childhood and adolescence.
Dallas Morning News
"Fresh, funny….A gifted storyteller with an eye for quirky, compelling detail….A poised and polished debut."
Anthony Marra
"It’s become cliché to say that a writer’s short stories have the weight of novels, but in Kirstin’s case it happens to be true. Her New Mexico is a crucible where individual desire is forged, lost, and reconstituted amid a backdrop of colliding histories and cultures. The result is as close to flesh and blood as black ink on white paper can come. She is a story writer of searing vision."
Bustle (Spring Break Recommended Read)
"[Lives] up to even the loftiest of expectations."
Peter Ho Davies
"A debut collection filled with stories that read like classics (reminiscent of the work of Alice Munro or Flannery O'Connor), by a young author who writes with the patient, implacable wisdom of time."
Marie Claire
"Now that we’ve read [Quade’s] darkly funny investigations into relationships, we can agree: her talent is undeniable."
San Francisco Chronicle
"Quade demonstrates her command of writing about complex issues of ethnicity and success head-on."
Ploughshares
"Each of the ten stories offers a lyrical aria of its own, but together they create the music of generations, of families, and of a people."
Elle
"Sparkling…features dreamers and schemers whose lives pulsate with wild hopes, hard luck, stunning secrets, and saving grace."
Jennifer duBois
"A stunning debut. With unflinching honesty and relentless compassion, Kirstin Valdez Quade conjures characters that are uncannily alive. Vibrant, incisive, and wickedly funny, Night at the Fiestas announces the arrival of a fiercely original new voice."
Atlantic
"Her vision has thrived on…fierce, flesh-conscious desire for transcendence."
Dallas Morning News - Jenny Shank
"Fresh, funny…. A gifted storyteller with an eye for quirky, compelling detail…. A poised and polished debut."
The Oprah Magazine O
"[A] polished and potent collection…Rooted deeply in place and ringing with authentic voices, these gripping stories confront the hardest human questions of how to love, trust and forgive."
The Atlantic - Ann Hulbert
"Remarkable… In almost every story, Quade goes for vivid spectacle and theatrical plot twists… But Quade focuses just as intensely on the subtler customs, cruelties, kindnesses, and skewed alliances of precarious family life… If Quade ever yearned to escape her archaic Catholic heritage and redefine herself, let’s be glad she didn’t. Her vision has thrived on its fierce, flesh-conscious desire for transcendence."
Bustle
"[Lives] up to even the loftiest of expectations."
Maggie Shipstead
"A writer of extraordinary perception, a sharp-eyed truth-teller who renders her characters and the landscapes they inhabit with exquisite care. Each of these marvelous stories illuminates the messy, tender, unexplored borderland inside us all where our finest virtues bleed into our worst faults. A brilliant debut."
Justin Torres
"Kirstin Valdez Quade is a fantastic writer, both stylish and sagacious. The stories here are taut and tense, while at the same time morally complicated, which is to say, they cut sharp and they cut deep. Night at the Fiestas is a book of extraordinary virtuosity."
New York Times Book Review
"Haunting and beautiful."
Kirkus Review
2015-01-22
Debut collection of stories set in New Mexico from an award-winning writer.Family ties—and family fissures—play a significant role in each piece. Catholic faith and practice are also prominent. In "The Five Wounds," a perennially unemployed and generally defeated man prepares to play the role of Jesus in a Passion play while trying to deal with his pregnant teenage daughter. Although the symbolic resonances are heavy, Quade's plainspoken style and mordant sense of humor save the story from bathos: "Thirty-three years old, the same as Our Lord, but Amadeo is not a man with ambition. Even his mother will tell you that." Indeed, many of these stories illuminate a world in which religious belief gives shape to everyday reality. "Ordinary Sins"—previously published in The New Yorker—features another unwed, expectant mother negotiating a religious world in which women have no authority. Corpus Christi celebrations provide a climactic turning point in "Nemecia," the strongest story in the collection and the one that gained entry into Best American Short Stories 2013. Quade offers readers a door into worlds that are likely unfamiliar, and she gives them the gift of letting them find their own ways. She doesn't bother to describe, for example, the society of flagellants that has existed in New Mexico—just beneath the official notice of the church—for centuries, nor does she explain the different worldviews and doctrinal positions of an American priest and his more conservative African colleague. But while she grounds her stories in a specific cultural setting, Quade offers visions of family that have universal resonance. In "Mojave Rats," a young mother is outsmarted and overwhelmed by her 7-year-old daughter, and her recognition of this fact does nothing to change it. Quade is a writer to watch.
