[6KC]≫ Libro Gratis The Madonnas of Echo Park A Novel Brando Skyhorse 9781439170809 Books

The Madonnas of Echo Park A Novel Brando Skyhorse 9781439170809 Books

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The Madonnas of Echo Park A Novel Brando Skyhorse 9781439170809 Books

I wish I had created a map of characters when I started this book. There are many characters and I assume they are all somehow connected and I probably missed the point of the story because I didn’t always remember the connections. Sometimes when a character was mentioned again later in the book I didn’t remember who they were or what their connection was to the current character/other characters. So, I suggest if you’re just starting, create some kind of map to depict characters’ parents, kids, lovers, friends... and maybe a blip about them so when you meet them again you won’t experience what I had.


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The Madonnas of Echo Park A Novel Brando Skyhorse 9781439170809 Books Reviews

Picked up this book after it won the PEN/Hemingway Award, since I've liked other P/H award winners in the past, and I was not disappointed. Skyhorse is a lush, unapologetically humanistic writer, and the book reads like a cross between a love song to and a eulogy for a community knotted together by love, tragedy, struggle, racism, class conflict, dreams, and circumstance.

MADONNAS OF ECHO PARK is rather OLIVE KITTERIDGE meets UNACCUSTOMED EARTH in its attention to interconnected lives and a specific immigrant/American community. I've realized how much I like the new genre emerging in books like MADONNAS OF ECHO PARK, OLIVE KITTERIDGE, and LET THE GREAT WORLD SPIN--novels that grow out of (thoroughly) linked independent characters, whose lives coalesce and create a miniature world in which the setting and local culture is almost a character itself. It allows all the rich possibilities of world-building a novel does, but more freedom and natural possibility for the plot. Like I felt with those other books, one story in MADONNAS OF ECHO PARK resonated with me especially, because of my personal experiences. I look forward to recommending the book to others and seeing which particular story resonates for them.
Echo Park, the Los Angeles neighborhood down the hill from Chavez Ravine, is the setting for Brando Skyhorse's interconnected story collection, The Madonnas of Echo Park. (I think Brando Skyhorse may be one of the coolest names I've ever heard for an author.)

The characters in Skyhorse's stories are Mexican-Americans of varying ages who are trying to fit in with or rebel against their culture and their neighborhood. Many of the characters are the types of people we pass by every day--cleaning women, bus drivers, day laborers, ex-convicts and teenagers--but Skyhorse brings each to life by wrapping us up in their stories. There's Felicia, who finds herself cleaning house for a family more damaged than she bargained for; Angie, who is reminiscing about her life-changing, fractious relationship with her teenage best friend; Efren, a bus driver who has always prided himself on his staunch devotion to rules and regulations, until one night; Hector, a migrant worker who is forced into covering up a murder; and many others.

Some of the stories in this collection truly moved me, some intrigued me and all but one compelled me to keep reading. Skyhorse created some complicated, multi-layered characters; even when they fall closer to stereotypes, I still found myself invested in what was happening to them. I never felt as if the way he connected the stories was too forced; at times, when I recognized the connections I was even a bit surprised (and even awed, once or twice). I look forward to seeing what comes next in his career, and I definitely recommend this book if you enjoy short stories.
We read this book for our college English/Reading class and, overall, we give the book 4 stars. First of all, we found the topics to be very relatable for us here in the Bay Area, especially the topics of gentrification and immigration. The book was told through several different characters’ points of view, which increased our interest as readers. This approach to writing emphasized the point that everyone has different perspectives, even those from the same racial group. As Millennials, we enjoyed learning from the 90’s pop culture references and comparing them to today’s times. Two pieces of advice for future readers as you read, look closely for connections between the characters in the different chapters and check out the discussions questions at the end of the book.

Our critiques were that there were a few too many characters to keep up with in the book. The last chapter didn’t recap the entire story, which would have been helpful, and the last chapter lacked character development.

SPOILER ALERT We learned that the Author’s Note was not true (!), which made us think of the author as dishonest. It left us with a bad feeling about the author. At the end of the book, we were hoping for a reconnection to the apology to Aurora from the Author’s Note, but that, unfortunately, didn’t happen.

Overall, it was a decent read.
This book is a waste of good paper. It is overrated, the characters are flat, it tries to be edgy but it comes across as forced, the writing style reeks of the MFA writers workshop. The writer seems to wrap up each chapter with a calamity; his characters get deported, commit suicide, are murdered, become homeless ad nauseum...and because the characters are poorly developed, you really don't care, so it is all an exercise in tedious banality. As a Mexican-American, this writer seems like he is trying to hard to sound "Chicano", it is like he is posing or something. Put it this way, if "Brando Skyhorse" turned out to be a pseudonym for a middle aged white lady from Peoria, I won't be surprised.
I wish I had created a map of characters when I started this book. There are many characters and I assume they are all somehow connected and I probably missed the point of the story because I didn’t always remember the connections. Sometimes when a character was mentioned again later in the book I didn’t remember who they were or what their connection was to the current character/other characters. So, I suggest if you’re just starting, create some kind of map to depict characters’ parents, kids, lovers, friends... and maybe a blip about them so when you meet them again you won’t experience what I had.