The Movies of My Life

Rating:
Summary: And outsider in his native land
Review: This novel of displacement really begins when teenager Beltran Soler returns for a vacation to Chile, the land of his birth - and it turns into a permanent relocation. He finds himself an outsider among his native people just as he's about to take the giant step into puberty.
And so he grows up and becomes a seismologist, believing he can protect himself from life's shaky foundations by immersing himself in the theories of tectonic plates. Then his grandfather dies in an earthquake and Soler holes up in an LA hotel and sort of comes unglued. He obsessively lists the movies of his life in an attempt to extinguish the firestorm of nostalgic that threatens to overwhelm him.
The Movies of My Life is a sly and humorous coming-of-age novel that is far deeper than it appears to be on the surface. It deals with the immigrant experience, culture shock, family connections, and contemporary family dysfunction.
It's a good one.