Soledad: A Novel

by Angie Cruz Narrated by Stacy Gonzalez

Overview

Award-winning author Angie Cruz takes listeners on a journey as one young woman must confront not only her own past of growing up in Washington Heights, but also her mother's.



At eighteen, Soledad couldn't get away fast enough from her contentious family with their endless tragedies and petty fights. Two years later, she's an art student at Cooper Union with a gallery job and a hip East Village walk-up. But when Tía Gorda calls with the news that Soledad's mother has lapsed into an emotional coma, she insists that Soledad's return is the only cure. Fighting the memories of open hydrants, leering men, and slick-skinned teen girls with raunchy mouths and snapping gum, Soledad moves home to West 164th Street. As she tries to tame her cousin Flaca's raucous behavior and to resist falling for Richie-a soulful, intense man from the neighborhood-she also faces the greatest challenge of her life: confronting the ghosts from her mother's past and salvaging their damaged relationship.



Evocative and wise, Soledad is a wondrous story of culture and chaos, family and integrity, myth and mysticism, from a Latina literary light.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

To write the definitive novel of a New York neighborhood can be to strike literary gold just ask Jonathan Lethem. Washington Heights native and Dominican activist Cruz stakes a clumsy claim to the area with this overwrought first effort. Soledad, a talented young artist on scholarship at Cooper Union, has finally escaped 164th Street for a downtown apartment. When she is called back home for the summer to care for her widowed mother, Olivia, who has fallen into a psychosomatic coma, she is forced to confront the family secrets behind her father's death and her strained relationship with Olivia. Much of the novel is told from the point of view of Soledad's female relatives: her aunt Gorda, a "bruja" (witch) who treats her sister's ailments with home remedies and ceremonies; her cousin, Flaca, a fiery adolescent whose rivalry with Soledad is the main subplot; and Olivia herself, in italicized dream narration and flashbacks. These characters are more interesting than Soledad, a standard-issue "caught between two worlds" heroine, but they are hardly three-dimensional. While Cruz sometimes captures fresh details of behavior and the rhythms of Dominican neighborhood life, she rarely lets them work alone, opting to tell rather than show her characters' psychology in passages that read like particularly banal therapy sessions. The narrative is peppered with cliches: "[W]hen a woman says no, if [men] see a glimpse of flirting or lips that are smiling, no echoes yes, yes if you try hard enough you will get me." Gorda's homespun mysticism is fascinating at first, but by the end it becomes heavy-handed as Cruz strives for a lyrical catharsis she hasn't earned. Readers enticed by a lengthy blurb fromJunot Diaz will be disappointed by a melodramatic plot and stale prose. Agent, Ellen Levine. (Aug.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

This first novel from Cruz a native of Washington Heights in Manhattan adeptly transcends all the tired and hackneyed classifications of what is now commonly known as the "immigrant experience." Sidestepping the approach of using the novel as a guide for taking readers on a sightseeing tour of how the "other half" lives, Cruz instead chooses to probe the complex inner lives of a first- and second -generation Dominican family living in Washington Heights. The story begins when Soledad, an aspiring young artist, reluctantly returns home from her life in the East Village when her mother, Olivia, falls mentally ill. In the ensuing events, we meet Gorda, Soledad's caring yet superstitious aunt; Flaca, Gorda's rebellious teenage daughter; and Victor, Gorda and Olivia's philandering brother who falls in love in spite of himself. These are only a few of the memorable characters compassionately evoked in a story of people coming to terms with the suffering and disappointment of life. Unfortunately, there are moments when the story falters, as Cruz's decision to narrate using a myriad character voices is not always successful or believable. Nonetheless, she remains an astute witness to the hopes, dreams, fears, and frustrations of all humans. While by no means great, this is a promising debut from an author to keep an eye on. For most fiction collections. "Library Journal" Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A choppy debut from young activist and teacher Cruz attempts to record the Dominican experience in New York City. Soledad returns to her family's Washington Heights neighborhood from her downtown art-gallery job when her mother, Olivia, falls mysteriously ill. It's this illness-Olivia's already a "living ghost," living in a state somewhere between depression and coma-that serves as the story's apparatus of Dominican mysticism: the vehicle on which we will tour "Nueva Yol." We meet Flaca, Soledad's slutty teenaged sister, and Richie, a neighborhood tough, then follow the love triangle that ensues among them, the source of what little tension there is. A string of subplots and minor characters follow, including Ciego, the requisite wise blind man, and Toe-Knee, the token non-Dominican (he's a black drug dealer), but none of them is particularly well-drawn, and there's no real reason Soledad is the titular character. After things get moving, there's also a parade of prostitutes and palm readers and magicians with their sauces and specialties, and though we've been assured that the 'hood is filled with hoods, Richie turns out to be a talented musician, Soledad an artist, Flaca an undiscovered prodigy, and Ciego an insightful anthropologist-self-taught, of course. This is the world where people literally say "Wassup?" to each other. It's "Do the Right Cosa", and sometimes Cruz's bleeds into unnecessary Spanish, perhaps there to remind the gringos that folk from D.R. speak a different language, are more than banal: they're a reminder that the story is ultimately addressed to an audience of "blanquitos". The odd moment when Cruz seems to capture genuineness-a man cradles his spittoon inhis lap, men play dominos on tables meant for chess-seem accidental in light of the fray of rote narrative choices. Not even a last-minute death and the tension of ambiguities-what is Flaca's real name? who is Soledad's real father?-are enough to redeem this unambitious first effort.

From the Publisher

Katori Hall The Boston Globe Tinted with the magical realism of Gabriel García Márquez, Cruz's first novel is that of man and woman, selective amnesia and persistent memories, redemption and survival.

Dodie Bellamy San Francisco Chronicle A vivid, breathing cityscape teeming with raw beauty, danger, and magic.

Mark Rozzo Los Angeles Times Nobody's ever really given us such a revealing look at New York's Dominican population before...Cruz, in this determinedly real yet often magical novel, offers canny insights into family life.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940175497367
Publisher:	Tantor Audio
Publication date:	08/16/2022
Edition description:	Unabridged
Sales rank:	886,472

Read an Excerpt

At eighteen, Soledad couldn't get away fast enough from her contentious family with their endless tragedies and petty fights. Two years later, she's an art student at Cooper Union with a gallery job and a hip East Village walk-up. But when Tía Gorda calls with the news that Soledad's mother has lapsed into an emotional coma, she insists that Soledad's return is the only cure. Fighting the memories of open hydrants, leering men, and slick-skinned teen girls with raunchy mouths and snapping gum, Soledad moves home to West 164th Street. As she tries to tame her cousin Flaca's raucous behavior and to resist falling for Richie -- a soulful, intense man from the neighborhood -- she also faces the greatest challenge of her life: confronting the ghosts from her mother's past and salvaging their damaged relationship.

Evocative and wise, Soledad is a wondrous story of culture and chaos, family and integrity, myth and mysticism, from a Latina literary light.

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