Rating: 
Summary: Amazing Book
Review: Caramelo is very Mexican, but at the same time delves into our common human experiences and relationships with a depth that is astounding. It's a book to be experienced with the heart, not the head. It's sensory, touching, funny, and heart rending.
Rating: 
Summary: stereotype after stereotype
Review: Poorly written and without a point, this is an endless barrage of stereotypes. I'm a Chicana, and I don't know why I'm supposed to believe any of this. It reads like a bad tourist vision of Mexico, of Chicanos whose life is just one cheap joke after another. Why are people taking this seriously? The best thing about this book is the cover, but Rosa Covarrubias must be turning in her grave, to be turned into the poster girl for the silly glorification of rebozos and tamales.
Rating: 
Summary: It didn't flow for me.
Review: I found the story good, but not riveting--when I could find it.
All the descriptive prose and Spanish phraseology were a distraction. I realize the author was painting a (very big) picture of sights, sounds and smells etc. but it often seemed to me that the thread of the story was buried in all that description. Anyone who knows a fair amount of Spanish and knows idioms and colloquial sayings would not find that element to be a problem. True, some meanings could be understood from the contxt or the explanation, but even with Spanish dictionary in hand it was too much for me. I finally just skipped it, but felt this caused me to lose a lot of appreciation for the story.
The writing didn't flow for me and I kept wishing the story could have been told in a more straightforward way.
I would like to suggest translations in () to assist non-Hispanic readers. The Spanish languge is beautiful and knowing more of what I was reading would have added a lot.
Let me also say that I own and have read the authors other books and love them greatly. I also found them to be much edgier and the writing does flow, or maybe soar would be a more apt description!!
Rating:
Summary: This rebozo unraveled - Este rebozo se destejio
Review: Cisneros's talent has been confirmed by Mango St and Woman Hollering Creek, her two fiction offerings from the past,and by the poetry of Loose Woman, loaded with a language deftly conjured and tooled, and achieving an alchemy that puts her among the very best American, not just Chicana, poets of our day. Given the talent she obviously owns, Caramelo is a big disappointment. It can hardly be called a novel, since it lacks the unity and resolution of theme that might make it one. It is instead a collection of unevenly written vignettes that would tell the story of three generations in the narrator's family, and contains precious few examples of fine writing among the eighty-odd little pieces. Much of the text is marred with forced metaphors, non-sequitors, redundance, and curio-shop descriptions - contrived and colorful and meant to appeal to tourist readers from outside the culture.
There is a list of bad habits in this book. The penchant for transliterated Spanish terms and phrases, instead of sensible translations that might convey their original irony and wit, is a device that now and then does produce the third dimension of a funny nuance or flip in meaning, but more often not, and the non-hispanic reader is left with a convoluted mutation of the original language. The oft-repeated dialectic of fact vs. fiction throughout is frivolous, adding nothing to the integrity of the book - it comes off as veiled apology for an identity crisis. The chance encounters of some of the main characters with famous historical figures, ala Forrest Gump, comes off as a gimmicky device, a filler; the book's format has other fillers: banal historical footnotes, roomy episodic headings, and lots of blank page space.
Another acute fault: the campy, diluted treatment given to what could have been dramatic encounters and unmasked moments, both amorous and contentious, between spouses and lovers - they are instead left to sputter clipped, insipid chatter concocted from a thin lexicon. We Mexicanos have a rich oral lexicon, displayed at every level and class of society -(our illiterate campesinos are, as a group, more eloquent in speech than most north american college graduates, whose oral skills have been truncated by addiction to electronic data)- and there should have been no lack of eloquence and verbosity in those encounters. Along with their paucity of dialogue, I found a paucity of truth in some of those encounters and actions, and I don't mean historic veracity or convention, I mean truth of character. Large doses of serendipity cannot substitute for that.
The linguistic talent, and heart to match, which I had hoped to find throughout the book appear only in scant doses here and there in the first two-thirds; we are finally treated to the true size of the author's talent in a few of the third part's episodes, dealing with moments from the narrator's adolescence. In these the language is honed, the humor is wicked and takes no prisoners, and that uncanny reach Cisneros has into the depth of the hidden self, into her heart of hearts which is ours too, because in it is a universal immigrant experience and a wide berth of compassion, does happen. Here is the gift of her linguistic prism, passed over honest moments of a young woman's life. (Again, "honest" having nothing to do with the fact vs. invention riddle, which is irrelevant).
What is proposed at the book's incipience as a major, if not the major, unifying device, the legenday "caramelo" style rebozo of the title - which survives as a near-sacred relic through the family saga - is never really given that place. It is reduced to occasional metaphoric allusions and incidental appearances here and there.
There are inconsistencies and hollows in some of the characters. For example, the "Awful Grandmother," a personage which should have by book's end stood large and commanding if not felicitous, ends up a mere caricature, bereft of the valor and tenderness of heart suggested in moments from her young life. The scene towards the end, where her ghost confronts Laya (the narrator) in the hospital while she keeps vigil by her father's bedside, appears as a desperate attempt to give substance and resolution to a character which has been two-dimensional and inconsistent through much of the book. Her sudden and unexplainable sympathetic conversion, and the trendy guru-like platitudes that are put in her mouth, are a maudlin quick-fix. My goodness, if the narrator has the aplomb and license to totally invent somewhat interesting ironies and speech for the historical figures that she inserts here and there, couldn't she have done as much for one of her main and supposedly geneological characters?
I am not surprised by the plethora of smoochy reviews from trade associates of the author that have greeted the book, but I am surprised by the absence of her true talent in it. As a Chicano who believes we have barely begun to explore the potential inherent in a literature of our people's experience, on a truly world-class level, I feel that the kind of uncritical, "sheltered" reviews our few famous writers usually get are an insult, implying, "We don't want to break with fashion, and we don't expect any better from you, so we'll just patronize you as a genre author." It may be culturally and politically safe, but it is patronizing.
If we really believe there are Chicana/o authors who can produce on a world class level, then we should demand that from them, and break out of the "school-play" syndrome. We shouldn't treat our authors like kids, for whom we will applaud no matter how off-key they sing or how many lines they flub in the school play. This is the big-time, with alot at stake. When an author like Cisneros has shown that she's got it, and furthermore, continues to claim that she's got it, then she better show it. She's representing more than herself, she's representing our people.
Rating: 
Summary: A MUST HEAR FROM A CONTEMPORARY SHEHERAZADE
Review: Author Sandra Cisneros gives resonant voice to her first novel since the widely acclaimed "The House On Mango Street." Her articulation brings these fictional characters to vibrant life and adds an unexpected richness to her story of Mexican/American culture. We return to Chicago's Mexican/American community and the family of Lala Reyes, a generous and vital woman. She comes from a clan of shawl makers, and now owns the caramelo, a beautiful striped rebozo which symbolizes history and the meaning of blood ties. A gifted and intriguing story teller, Cisneros holds nothing back as she paints fully realized human beings with all their flaws, foibles, and goodness. Her story begins with the Reyes' family's annual trek from Chicago to Mexico City, which is where Lala hears the stories of her forebears and their sometimes hard scrabble lives in San Antonio, Texas and Mexico. Stories may be true or they may be embroidered - but there is always something to learn. Caramelo is a saga replete with life, love and laughter told by a natural weaver of tales. This is a must-hear from a contemporary Sheherazade. - Gail Cooke
Rating:
Summary: Caramelo
Review: I thorougthly enjoyed this epic novel. It is not a quick read but a thoughtful, careful spun story about multigenerations of Mexicans and growing up Mexican American in Chicago. Cisneros' prose is concise and flows like the rebozo. She gives you just the right amount of verbage to appreciate the story line. One of the best books that I have read in quite a while. Thank you Sandra for this wonderful, charming, elegant novel about being Mexican.
Rating:
Summary: Masterpiece!
Review: Clearly, Sandra Cisneros is a genius! This is one of the best books I have ever read. The story is completely engaging and I really fell in love with the characters. The writing is out of this world, in a word it is exquisite. The story is a multi-generational tale of a family who is Mexican-American. I am attracted to books that tell a story of a culture I am unfamiliar with and then after reading such a book I am very interested in people of that culture. This is such a book. Along with that it is just a great, great read. Do not hesitate to get this book, and if you have a chance to see Sandra Cisneros at a reading do whatever you need to to get there, she is wonderful in person, funny, warm, and engaging. This book gets my highest recommendation! I am lucky to have read it.
Rating:
Summary: A charmer
Review: Exhibiting a humor that is at once Mexican, American, and Mexican-American, Sandra Cisneros tells the story of an immigrant family that is as universal and yet particular as these stories are. Lala Reyes is the seventh child of the family and the only girl. They live in Chicago, where her dad and his two brothers run an upholstery shop. There are cousins (my favorites are three brothers named Elvis, Byron, and Aristotle), looong caravan-style car trips to Mexico City to visit the Awful Grandmother, and some snooping into the past by Lala. The Awful Grandmother was once a girl called Soledad, whose father was a dyer of rebozos, the traditional Mexican shawl, and whose mother was renowned for her intricate knotting of the fringes. All that remains of their art in the family is a rebozo with unfinished fringes, a caramelo, a shawl dyed in stripes the colors of caramel, licorice, and vanilla which appears around the shoulders of generations of women. The plot winds and circles, often ending up in surprising places. "Caramelo" is a long book, but it could have been longer--many of the minor characters are unfinished and there's a sense that Cisneros had such a wealth of stories to tell that she simply could not stuff them all between these covers. The writing is so bright and fine I would have been happy to spend another hundred pages with the Reyes family. My sole quibble with "Caramelo" is the extensive use of Spanish words and phrases. If readers do not speak Mexican Spanish, will they miss the full flavor of the novel? Would we be as willing to accept a book peppered with this much Hungarian or French? I would hate to think that some readers would find this a turn-off and feel excluded from Sandra Cisneros' rich and delightful story.
Rating:
Summary: Still stuck...
Review: I was so excited for this book and for Ms. Cisneros. I was first in line to purchase it. However, when I looked through it, I was disappointed by the fractured, child-like chapters. Those would have been acceptable some of the time, but not so consistently! They were like small portions when i wanted a serious burrito. The longer chapters did, however, capture a narrative, but they were akin to the uninterrupted, smooth motor sounds from an otherwise busted up brand-new used Cadillac. There were parts that were moving. There were parts that were annoying (the footnotes, in particular, felt condescending). Overall, I suggest that Ms. Cisneros abandon self-conscious writing and leave that to the wack mid-30s gringos who don't have a rich narrative. Stick to a true, connected plot (that doesn't mean you have to be serious) and ditch the jazzy fonts, and you won't stay stuck for long.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: I read in an article that Sandra Cisneros was trained as a poet and after the first few pages of Caramelo, I could tell. She uses such vivid imagery and uses it so well, that you feel as if you're really there in the car with these characters, riding along with them. Her sentences also have a lyrical quality that makes you hear them. She really knows how to play with language, imagery, sound, and meter and make it all work together. I love this book.
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