The Five Wounds
Ratings15
Average rating3.8
Winner of The Center for Fiction's 2021 First Novel Prize 'A gorgeously written, Franzen-calibre tale' O Magazine In this vivid, darkly funny and beautifully rendered debut novel, Kirstin Valdez Quade brings to life the struggles of five generations of the Padilla family. Amadeo, struggling to stay off the bottle, Angel, his pregnant fifteen-year-old daughter, Yolanda, the family matriarch, reeling from a recent discovery, Angel's mother, who Angel isn't speaking to and Tío Tive, keeper of the family's history. But amid the challenges they face individually and together, it is Connor, Angel's baby, who might just be the one to save the family from themselves.
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There's so many good things about this book — the precise, wonderful way it is written, the character development, the narrative arch, the language, and how Spanish and English blend together through it. But, finishing it, I was left with such an overwhelming warm and longing feeling, and that's what I recall best right now. It's one of those stories which is so humane that it just hugs you, makes you cry and laugh, and when it is over, leaves that innocent, almost childish feeling of ‘Oh, I'm gonna miss them'. And it's true — I've fallen deeply for Yolanda, Angel, Amadeo, Connor, and I just wanted to know more and more about them, about Las Penas, the rites of love and salvation and pain in this community of New Mexico. This is why we read, mostly, isn't it?
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