First published 2014
Orestes lives with his six siblings in Lagos de Moreno, where his father teaches high school civics and practices elaborate insults as an art form. His mother feeds the large family by making countless quesadillas for Aristotle, Electra, Castor, Pollux, Archilochus, Callimachus, and Orestes himself. The family watches from their home as protestors challenge the Institutional Revolutionary Party's latest election fraud in the 1980s. Orestes grows restless with small town life, where cows outnumber people and priests outnumber cows. He clashes with his domineering older brother while seeking escape from rural boredom. Around them swirl the absurd realities of Mexican life: pregnant livestock, Polish settlers, religious pilgrims, UFO sightings, and hallucinogenic fruit. The political turmoil outside mirrors the domestic tensions within as Orestes navigates family dynamics and his father's obsession with verbal sparring. This darkly comic tale captures a family's struggle against poverty and the strange perils of their world.
Genres: fiction, family, historical-fiction, 20th-century, 21st-century, political-thriller
Vibes: dark, emotional, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, found-family
Setting: Lagos de Moreno, Mexico
Period: 1980s
204 pages · Kindle Edition · Not Avail