Chango's Fire

Rating:
Summary: El Barrio Yesterday and Today
Review: CHANGO'S FIRE by Ernesto Quinonez showcases several individuals and their lives in New York City's Spanish Harlem. The main characters highlighted are Julio, Maritza and Helen. Told through Julio, we receive a distinct, informational and gritty tale that boasts serious social commentary.

Julio is involved in an insurance scam; he is an arsonist and attends college in the evenings. Working for an Italian immigrant left over in Spanish Harlem from the 1970's, Julio sets properties on fire in and around New York City. It started out with private properties and quickly developed into properties in the name of gentrification, urban renewal and planned shrinkage. Maritza is the pastor of the First People Church of God and social activist of the neighborhood. In Julio's words, she services "the greatest collection of misfits, sinners and freaks." She sells dreams in the form of illegal United States citizenship papers, but only to a select few. Helen is a transplant from a Wisconsin farming community whose parents attended Cornell University. Helen's dream was to leave Wisconsin for New York City to revel in all New York has to offer. She arrives in Spa Ha, as part owner of an art gallery. Julio and Helen own their apartments in the same building while Maritza's church is located in the third apartment. What occurs with the mixing of urban professional whites and immigrant Spaniards, who have claimed this area of NYC as their own, is the catalyst of this story.

Quinonez weaves this fire with excellent visualization, utilizing the emotional torment of the characters. Julio's voice is powerful and unyielding. Maritza's righteousness appears charitable, but Quinonez delves deep into her character exposing a woman that you either admire or loathe. And finally, we come to know Helen not only through Julio's voice, but also through the letters she writes to Julio; honest letters citing her lack of understanding and her willingness to learn. At times my heart went out to her while empathizing with the residents of this neighborhood and their economic plight.

Erupting and quelling this fire simultaneously is the mixture of religious and spiritual themes; this is where we meet Chango. Sprinkle in the subtle romance theme with the suspense and Quinonez has ignited a flame so strong that it may never die.

Reviewed by Dawn R. Reeves
of The RAWSISTAZ Reviewers


Rating:
Summary: Bursting with heat and passion.
Review: Chango's Fire is a major leap forward for Quinonez. I truly enjoyed his first novel, Bodega dreams. This effort leaves that one in the dust.

Chango's Fire is a novel full of fully developed and vibrant characters that are transcended by the main character--the setting. The book plays out in Spanish Harlem (Spa Ha to all us yuppies)and the tide of history in Spanish Harlem provides an undercurrent of tension, passion and authenticity to all the characters that populate this novel.

First among these is Julio Santana, a professional arsonist bent as the novel begins on quitting his profession. That proves to be harder than expected as on his last job he breaks the cardinal rule of his business, thus pitting him against an array of forces inexorably pulling him back into his personal nightmare. His life is further complicated by a new tenant in his building--a beautiful and intriguing Anglo woman who mesmerizes Julio, his childhood love/adversary, Maritza, whose socialist church is also located in his building, as well as his parents, with whom he lives.

The book blends the hippest current dynamics of contemporary Spanish Harlem with the often tumultuous and violent history of that place into the dynamics pulling and tugging at Julio's troubles. It provides a window into the truly diverse dynamics of that neighborhood--religion, organized crime, gentrification, Hispanic family life and Latino passion.

Quinoez has an extremely powerful writing voice and a true sense of pacing. The book is compelling and makes for a compulsive read. This is not so much a book one reads as much as it is a book one lives in.

I can only hope there is much more of this sort of writing yet to come from Quinonez. This book is brilliant.




Rating:
Summary: Quinonez at his best
Review: Chango's Fire is an absorbing, poignant story of Spanish Harlem
and the people who live there. Julio, who knows no other life than this burned out ghetto, fights desperately to hold on to his roots while trying to make a better life for himself and his parents. But he becomes increasingly entangled in a situation that doesn't seem to have any solution.
While he resents the invasion of yuppies and the growing gentrification of his beloved neighborhood, he is drawn to everything that will pull him out of it.
Offering another point of view, Helen, a new arrival, is scoffed at and resented by the old neighborhood residents, and even by Julio himself---but not for long.
This is the story of Julio's complicated struggle, beautifully told with wit, compassion, and intensity. It is a compelling novel. Mr. Quinonez is a perceptive reporter of the intricasies and conflicts of Spanish Harlem.

Rating:
Summary: You won't be able to put it down.
Review: Chango's Fire is filled with color and fills your mind with it's light. The prose is well and tightly written. You are caught up and have finished the book before you know it. Hours have passed and it seems just a few short minutes. Extremely engrossing and simply delicious.

Rating:
Summary: Better than his first novel, but...
Review: There is something simultaneously appealing and frustrating about Ernesto Quinonez's second novel, a marked improvement over his highly-flawed debut, Bodega Dreams, but in the end, still something of a disappointment. This time, the problem lies in his biting off more than he can chew with too many subplots rolling around what is essentially one man's coming-of-age story at its heart.

He's inexplicably combined the systematic burning of Spanish Harlem, insurance fraud, organized crime, gentrification, Santeria, pseudo-socialism, illegal citizenship papers, a shady government agent and a few other random nuggets into a muddle-headed plot that rests precariously, and unsuccessfully, on a straight-out-of-Hollywood interracial romance...and frankly, he's just not up to the task. When the cliches aren't jumping off the page at the reader, the heavy-handed didacticism is smacking them in the face.

His protagonist, Julio Santana, is a philosophizing arsonist yearning for the old days while trying to turn his life around after the proverbial "last job." Almost every other character is either an archetype or a stereotype, none ever fully coming to life beyond the "issue" Quinonez has chosen them to represent. After some hit-or-miss character and plot 'development' in the first two-thirds of the book, the hasty climax gets sloppy and, just like in Bodega Dreams, includes an out-of-left-field occurrence to wrap things up. The too-convenient epilogue only makes matters worse.

That said, Quinonez is no hack and with a less ambitious plot that focused more on the characters he obviously had a connection to, especially the engaging babalawo Papelito, he could have had something really special here. Personally, I could see a viable sequel springing from this effort, focusing only on Julio's journey to his Asiento, his strained relationship with his parents and a fleshed-out romance with Helen and the issues that arise from it. The first two things represent the strongest aspects of Chango's Fire, while the latter's potential got buried in melodrama.

Rating:
Summary: Great stuff!
Review: This book was the best book I've read that handles Santeria with respect and beauty. The best chapters are the ones that deal with the religion as stories. The book was great as whole though and I will read the authors other books like Bodega Dreams because of how the author treated his subjects.