Seora Rodrguez and Other Worlds

Seora Rodrguez dips into her purse and theres no telling what shell come up witha sticky lollipop, a phone bill, or a rosary; a reminder of daily life, a bit of family history, a personal talisman, or . . . who knows? . . . a token into another world altogether. Such are the surprises and possibilities, the unpredictability and warm familiarity of Martha Cerdas magical novel. Seora Rodriguez and her family are placed shoulder-to-shoulder and page-to-page with strangers, acquaintances, and a host of importune, if not impertinent, stories: the profound distortions wrought in a womans life by the oppressive presence of her maid; the furor caused by a premenstrual pimple; the flashbacks and chaotic grief Judas Iscariot experiences at the moment of his death; the disruption surrounding the appearance of a supposed member of the Los Angeles Dodgers. A bestselling writer widely celebrated in her native Mexico, Martha Cerda defines her own turn along the path of Latin American magical realism. In this novel the feminine, the practical, and the earthy blend with the fantastic and phantasmagoric. Tragedy and playfulness, sophistication and naivet mingle. What is at once a comedy of manners, a delightful collection of loosely related anecdotes, stories, sketches, and epiphanies, is also an artful entree into several literary and philosophical questionsthe relationship between language and reality and the power of one to create and alter the other; the link between chaos and different forms of organization that pass for order.