The Crystal Frontier by Carlos Fuentes

The Crystal Frontier consists of nine stories with intermingling characters. It all holds together as loose sketch - probably the best way to portray a big picture - about the people and issues around the Mexican/U.S. border. This kind of structure also makes for lighter reading than I've experienced with Carlos Fuentes. I read Terra Nostra which was this enormous tome, very clever and chock-a-block with hardcore history. It was definitely the work of an author/scholar. It was great,by the way. I read it too many years ago to properly review it, but I trust my memory this far. Go buy it now if you can.

Lighter reading don't mean fluffy though. Glimpses into characters of The Crystal Frontier - Mexican, American and Chicano - can be intense. One in particular springs to mind, The Line of Oblivion, which had a claustrophobic otherworld quality that reminded me of Jorge Luis Borges' writing. Or the sad and romantic title story of contact between a young executive and a Mexican labourer through a pane of office glass. Or how about the one about the single mother who assembles television parts on the Mexican side, pretending her son is in daycare when really he is at home tied to the table leg? And then there is the maid in Chicago who teaches her mistress about love and constancy in the eleventh hour. Oh, there are a bunch of good 'uns. Here's a bit from Spoils, about a successful Mexican food critic:

"Dionisio would be speaking to dozens of Beavis and Butt-head wanna-bes, the offspring of Wayne's World, legions of young people convinced that being an idiot is the best way to pass through the world recognized by no one (in some cases) or everyone (in others). Masters always of an anarchic liberty and a stupid natural wisdom redeemed by an imbecility devoid of pretensions or complications......How could the successors of Forrest Gump understand that, when a single Mexican city, Puebla, can boast of more than eight hundred dessert recipes, it is because of generations and generations of nuns, grandmothers, nannies and old maids, the work of patience, tradition, love and wisdom? How when their supreme refinement consisted in thinking that life is like a box of chocolates, a varied pre-fabrication, a fatal Protestant destiny disguised as free will?"

All these people's lives sift back and forth across the border, either metaphorically or physically. Fuentes shows how geographically long and wide this border is; how vague and shifting it is, historically and socially speaking; and how messed up everything is as a result.

Buy Crystal Frontier from amazon.com or amazon.ca.
Buy Terra Nostra from amazon.com or amazon.ca.

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