I got this book just for Bookcrossing and will read and or release, I don't know which yet!

Amazon Editorial Review

The celebrated author of The House on Mango Street gives us an extraordinary new novel, told in language of blazing originality: a multigenerational story of a Mexican-American family whose voices create a dazzling weave of humor, passion, and poignancy—the very stuff of life.

Lala Reyes’ grandmother is descended from a family of renowned rebozo, or shawl, makers. The striped caramelo rebozo is the most beautiful of all, and the one that makes its way, like the family history it has come to represent, into Lala’s possession. The novel opens with the Reyes’ annual car trip—a caravan overflowing with children, laughter, and quarrels—from Chicago to “the other side”: Mexico City. It is there, each year, that Lala hears her family’s stories, separating the truth from the “healthy lies” that have ricocheted from one generation to the next. We travel from the Mexico City that was the “Paris of the New World” to the music-filled streets of Chicago at the dawn of the Roaring Twenties—and, finally, to Lala’s own difficult adolescence in the not-quite-promised land of San Antonio, Texas.

Caramelo is a romantic tale of homelands, sometimes real, sometimes imagined. Vivid, funny, intimate, historical, it is a brilliant work destined to become a classic: a major new novel from one of our country’s most beloved storytellers.

Selected from the General Lit VBB, Happy Reading!

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I received this book in the mail from bookstogive of Tennessee. I chose this book from the General Literature VBB organized by bookstogive.

Thank you for this book, bookstogive. I have read the first book written by Sandra Cisneros. It will be interesting to read this one and see how she has progressed as a writer.

It was interesting to learn about life in Mexico City during the first half of the 20th century. The first half of the book tells the story of the protagonist's paternal great-grandparents and paternal grandparents. The plot unfolds in a long series of short chapters or stories. The book is over 400 pages. This is not a sentimental view of life in Mexico, life was difficult, and the Mexican revolution and instability of those decades was portrayed. The book starts off with a description of the protagonist's family in Chicago in the 1960s. A long family car trip to Mexico City to visit grandparents is described. Then, the story of the grandparents' lives follows with the plot finally returning to the modern life of the main character, Lala. The story is semi-autobiographical but it is a fictional work.

This book shall be put into the Around the World bookbox organized by Hobbit. It will be traveling to Debnance of Texas.

I just saw Sandra Cisneros at the Texas Book Festival this year a few months ago. This is one of her books I've not yet read.