by Elizabeth Acevedo
Read by the author, Sixta Morel & Danyeli Rodriguez del Orbe
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Or listen at Libro.fm
Release date: August 1, 2023
Content: There was a lot of swearing, including multiple f-bombs, talk of sex and p0rn, and abuse by adults towards children. It will be in the Fiction section of the bookstore.

I have a tumultuous history with magic realism. A lot of the time, it doesn’t sit well; if there’s going to be magic, my brain reasons, then why don’t we have it be magic. Give me someone pulling cars out of their dreams, if you want to set it in the real world. But the idea that someone’s “magic” can predict death, or tell if you were lying, or – heaven help me – have a magical vagina, you lose me. 

On the one hand: I have really loved Acevedo’s books in the past. I think she’s a brilliant writer and I’ve really enjoyed the tales she’s had to tell. I was excited by this one: the stories of sisters who have immigrated from the Dominican Republic, and their reflections on their lives and loves as they lead up to the living wake of the oldest sister. Sounds good, right? 

But, the narrator is Ona, an anthropologist, and the book’s framework is her collecting and telling these stories. I was fine when it was the stories, but Ona? Ona – she of the magic vagina – I intensely disliked. That’s an understatement. I loathed it when she was around when she interrupted the story with her own observations and her own narrative. I wished I could have skipped it – I was listening to it on audio; I suppose I could have, but it’s not the same as skipping pages in a book – and moved on with the part of the story I was interested in. 

I finished it. But, in the end, my dislike of Ona and magical realism trumped whatever good the book had.