This Friday, Libreria Martinez in Santa Ana presents Dagoberto Gilb reading from his latest novel, "The Flowers."
Daniel Olivas, writing in the El Paso Times has this to say:
"Dagoberto Gilb's new novel, "The Flowers" (Grove Press, $24 hardcover), is a ruthlessly potent portrait of urban distress as seen through the eyes of a young man.
The story's focus is Sonny Bravo, a precocious 15-year-old living with his mother and stepfather in an unidentified large city suspiciously suggestive of Los Angeles.
The first sentence lets us into Sonny's fractured world as he recounts breaking into homes: "Not that many years ago I would go to a house in the neighborhood, not always someone's I knew, one I'd never been inside of, where I'd only have to maybe hop a fence, nothing complicated, and from the backyard I'd crawl through an open window."
But Sonny was not a burglar in the usual sense. Rather, he broke into these homes principally to see "how the people lived, imagining how it would be in their house." He wished his life was as orderly and "normal" as those displayed in framed pictures in these homes: "Husbands in suits and wives with necklaces and old grandparents from the other times way before."...This is a ferocious, provocative novel, one that confirms Gilb's reputation as one of our finest contemporary writers."
Martinez Bookstore is located at 1110 North Main in Santa Ana telephone: 714-973-7900.
The reading begins at 7 pm.
Arrive early.
See you there!
(This reading will be recorded and broadcast on KPFK's "Bibliocracy.")
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