Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful Debut Collection!
Review: Latino life in the small Texas border city of Brownsville comes alive in this entirely engaging debut collection of nine short stories arranged in three parts. The first three stories are grouped in the section "I Thought You and Me Were Friends", and focus on male relationships. The opening tale tells of a young boy working at a firework stand and his realization that his boss isn't a nice person. The second is about a man overly obsessed with a hammer borrowed by a white neighbor, and charts the ups and downs of their friendship in relation to the hammer. The final story follows a young slacker whose best (and only) friend recently died and left him without human anyone to talk to. This last one takes a slightly (David) Lynchian turn, and isn't quite as strong as the first two.The second part, "They Say He Was Lost", is about essentially good men struggling with life. The first story is one of the weaker ones, about an old gardener who has lost his religion. The details of his living and work conditions are far more interesting than his spiritual predicament. Next is a brilliant portrait of a man in his early 20s who married, divorced, and had a kid too young, and doesn't really understand his ex-wife, his child, what happened to his youth, and what's happening to his future. It's a heartbreaking story that shoots to the core of single-family parenting and the other parent. The third tale is of a hardworking state employee who is driven to desperate acts by a neighbor's dog. The final three stories, "Don't Believe Anything He Tells You", veer into a more odd turf. The first deals with a man whose sly cousin hustles him into prepaying for his funeral. The second is a rather garden-variety young boy/beautiful next door neighbor piece. The third is a bit of a comic turn about a geriatric bowling (the only female protagonist in the book) whose lucky bowling ball gets stolen. The collection is somewhat reminiscent of John McNally's 1999 collection, Troublemakers. Both sets of stories are primarily about working-class men living in marginalized communities between the coasts, trying to hold their own as their communities shift around them. As such, they are more directly relevant to majority of people in this country than the plethora of tiresome New York, San Francisco, historical, or academe-set novels that seem to dominate the bookstores. Casares doesn't seek to shove any messages or agenda in the reader's face, he's simply writing about people and how they live where he comes from. Great stuff.
Rating: 
Summary: Thank you Oscar!
Review: My husband is from Brownsville and we both loved this book. We are still laughing about Chango. Great stories, wonderful characters. I am not much of a writer myself, so I will leave my review at that!
Rating:
Summary: My wife and I REALLY enjoyed this book.
Review: My wife and I really enjoyed each one of the stories in this book, although we each had our favorites. As a first generation Latino living in Los Angeles, it was as though I knew or could otherwise relate to most of the characters in his book. The characters are both young and old, male and female. Most of the stories made me laugh, but I found "Domingo" and his loss the most heartfelt. I highly recommend this book.
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