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Summary: Couldn't Get Into Supernatural, ghosts, curanderos, etc.
Review: I tried reading this book, got just past 75 pages, and couldn't quite attach to a storyline and plot. The story kept drifting off with too many other characters, and I soon lost interest. I guess I can't get into these types of books.
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Summary: A novel that may not be for everyone
Review: I was surprised to see that almost all of the negative reviews weren't rated as "helpful" to people so I will try to write one that is as objective as possible so that it may be both helpful and revealing of the book's more negative aspects.I had to read this book for my AP English class so it definitely has "literary merit." However, there are problems that I have with both its style and content. First, and most noticeably, is the frequent (and I would say near excessive) use of Spanish and English in the same sentence. Now this may just be me, but I really do not like that. My cousins (who were reared in Spanish speaking households) were told that it was fine to either speak Spanish or English, but never in the same sentence. I can understand the spanish parts and it distracts me, and I imagine it would be much worse for non-Spanish speakers who would miss a part of the novel without a Spanish-English dictionary handy. Another problem is its bad grammar. While it may be in the name of "authenticity" the use of phrases such as "I didn't say nothing" are jarring and out of place in the often lyrical sections. The second problem I have with this book is its content. It often relates grim details to the reader (bodily mutilation and "treating" constipation in a more... "direct" way) that are sometimes necessary to the plot but sometimes just gory fluff. Also disconcerting is the entire concept of its mystical realism. Characters die, descend to hell, and then return. Mystical rituals such as chanting and rubbing live chickens over people, and the use of tarot cards are told. Now these in and of themselves aren't bad, but they're passed off as Catholicism. These are perhaps actually local Native American practices, with a layer of Christianity on top. I am Catholic and if you do decide to read this book and are unfamiliar with Catholicism or Christianity in general, there is one thing I want you to take away from this review; THE RELIGIOUS PRACTICES DESCRIBED IN THE BOOK ARE NOT THOSE OF CATHOLICS (I apologize for the Caps Lock...), nor is the concept of dying and then living again (at least in this world) or spirits inhabiting the earth. I think that without this clarification the book does a disservice to the Catholic religion, and Christianity in general. I have tried to make this review as objective and clear as possible, with my opinions clearly stated as such. I hope it helps. I'm not saying it is a bad book, but it certainly is not for everyone.
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Summary: I was forced to read this....................... Thank God!
Review: It has been four years since I was obligated to read this novel in my college literature class. I am so pleased that my professor assigned this book. It still holds up today as one of the best I have ever read. Although I come from a white middle-class family in a small white-bread community, I was able to relate to these characters as sisters, as family. I have read this story several times. Even though the pages are tattered and the cover has been ripped off, I will never give this book up to any recycle bin. From page one you will be so engrossed that you will not be able to put it down. You may finish it in one sitting or fall down trying.
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Summary: A Book Abouth Faith
Review: It is hard to believe that So Far From God first came out like a wild bull into the ring more than ten years ago. Every time I read it (and I do each semester for my classes in Religious Studies) I laugh and I cry along with "Sofia" at the unraveling of hundreds of years of culture in the Southwest. And the "magical" way Castillo has of winding it all back together for our heroine. As a professor in Religious Studies, this is not magical realism. This is a book about faith. Faith in the earth, Our Mother. Taken from my home as child in Arizona to be raised by "good Christian Whites", this book brought me back home in a way that only a masterpiece could.
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Summary: Magical and Humorous
Review: Magical, humorous and a tribute to the strength of women, So Far From God is a delightful jouney. I savored every moment in a state of laughter or wonder or both. I applaud its style, written in a way that celebrates how life isn't a plot, but rather a tapestry of stories. This work is pure light. -Kaya McLaren, author of Church of the Dog
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Summary: An excellent NOVEL!
Review: Samuel Taylor Coleridge called drama "that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith." The same may be said of reading fiction. When we sit down with a novel, we enter into a shared agreement with the author and other readers when we willingly suspend disbelief. We know that everything that is happening in the narrative isn't real, but the author and the audience have all entered into a conspiracy "of poetic faith" in an attempt to bring to life a quasi-reality that will transcend and communicate some perception about life in this world. That willingness to enter the world the author had created--be it in traditional fiction, magical realism, science fiction, utopian/distopian literature, was one of the agreements I asked my university students to make at the start of every semester. It was therefore particularly disturbing to read the reviewer who insisted that Castillo's characters and settings "did not ring true." So Far From God is fiction and is not intended as biography or ethno-sociology. It is what it is: an excellent novel about a remarkable woman, Sofia, and her equally remarkable, if somewhat unusual, daughters. Like the previous reviewer, I too found that So Far From God was the novel which my students were most likely to take home to their mothers, and to recommend to other women--not for its realistic depiction of New Mexico, but for its empowering treatment of women.
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Summary: A manic collision of supernatural, comic, and good talk
Review: SO FAR FROM GOD
Ana Castillo
In the seemingly dull town of Tome, New Mexico we meet a family abandoned by their father simply described as one who likes to gamble and has a Clark Gable moustache. Sophia and her four daughters remain for the story. Immediately, the reader becomes entranced and entangled in the lives of these women. Esperanza, the eldest daughter was a Chicano campus radical in college and now works as a television newscaster. She desires to understand her family and attempts to match them with the descriptions of dysfunctional families in the self-improvement books she reads. The second daughter Caridad is a nurse who likes to pacify herself with a few shots of Royal Crown and anonymous sex after her shifts at the hospital. Fe the third daughter gravely desires the "perfect" from everything including her mundane, bank job to her fiancé who runs the local mini-mart service station. The fourth daughter is called La Loca because of her death and subsequent resurrection at age three and mystical powers she inherited as a result of the event. La Loca is saintly bequeathed by the community, however she becomes repulsed by the odor of humans and is unable to share her powers with anyone outside of the family.
So Far From God brilliantly takes the reader into a manic collision of supernatural, comic, horrific, Hispanic and Native American cultures, T.V. mystics, home remedies, myths and gossip. It is crowded with good talk and humorous situations.
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Summary: A "Must Read" book for all women
Review: So Far from God is wonderful reading material. It brings to mind the relationship between my mom and her daughters. The bond between mother and child is evident as she sacrifices her own life to help all her daughters achieve what they want. The characters are wacky and engrossing. This is one of Castillo's best books.
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Summary: So Far from God
Review: So Far From God written by Ana Castillo This writer created images of the southwest in such a way that I believed I was there in the very town and casa de Sofia. The writing is strong and precise. It immediately engages the reader into the lives of the main characters (what a cast of characters!) This resembles a telenovela, it is amusing, hilarious, tramatic and dramatic! It weaves into the possible into the surreal. So Far From God puts you the reader, in the center of a tornado (la familia de Sofia) and glides you into a relative calm as you conclude. I enjoyed this book greatly because it made laugh and wonder at the ongoing events. She is totally creative in this piece and I look forward to her other novels. Ana Castillo is a credit to her hometown-Chicago, surely her writing is not far from God, but a direct gift from God.
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Summary: Awesome Book
Review: This book chronicles the struggles of a family of five women as they must decide how they are to interact with the larger white American culture.
Each women chooses her own path as to how they are to interact with the larger culture. The book chronicles the difficulties of being forced to live with dual identities in modern American culture.
This book also is an interesting study of how cultures change and merge as they interact with each other. This is especially true of popular religion. One can almost see this book as an analysis of the official religion and how that is different from the role religion plays in the houses of people in their everyday lives.
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