Alvarez, Aldo

Average customer rating:

The best collection of stories in recent memory
The Death Of Expectations
Mostly moving stories
An okay book
Wonderful Monsters

Interesting Monsters
Aldo Alvarez
Manufacturer: Graywolf Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

Contemporary | General | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Short Stories | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Amazon.com

A sly, brainy, delicately shaded novel masquerading as a postmodern short story collection, Aldo Alvarez's debut is like an offbeat dinner guest who ends up as the life of the party. Most of these 16 stories offer a fragment in an ongoing (though out-of-sequence) tale of the love relationship of Mark, a brooding, slightly homophobic music producer, and Dean, an antiques appraiser, who tests the tolerance of his new love interests by making a queeny display of himself on first dates. One of the most poignant of these stories, "Quintessence," takes place before Dean meets Mark, and is about his failed attempt to find love with a simple, well-meaning, ordinary Joe, who has shown Dean his horrible "art" of doll toilet-paper covers, "breathtakingly ugly in design and execution." Refusing to take the easy way out of this heartbreaking scenario, Alvarez's sympathies remain evenly divided. Even when Dean hates himself, his author doesn't. With malice toward none, and humor for all, Alvarez builds a network of complicated but very real connections, in a voice that is spare and surprising. --Regina Marler

Book Description

What does your soul sound like? Mark, a has-been pop star at 40, converts his mother's attic into a recording studio to find out. Dean, who has AIDS, moves to his native Puerto Rico with his partner to enjoy his last few months of life, only to find himself battling a scheming, homophobic real estate agent who is ultimately trapped by her own wicked plans.

With a playful intelligence, Alvarez shows that the real monsters in these stories are the prejudices that keep us silent and invisible. Here, the living visit the dead, lovers and friends endure catastrophic first dates and heartbreaking good-byes, and the lucky ones, sometimes, find true love.

Customer Reviews:

The best collection of stories in recent memory.......2002-09-26

I find a lot of collections of short stories have that aroma of M.F.A. program to them: they're samey, predictable, tame, bloodless, by-the-book, trendy, with maybe a few features that distinguish them from each other and from the Big Name Author books they're parroting. Aldo Alvarez's collection constantly surprises, engages both my emotions and my mind, and succesfully breaks the rules; hopefully, it will also set a trend for books in their own genre, with few or no equals. I feel like I've discovered a new favorite author; I've just read INTERESTING MONSTERS a second time, and I can't seem to get enough. I strongly recommend it to my friends.

The Death Of Expectations.......2002-08-04

I had heard about this book from friends of mine in San Francisco, where I live, and I couldn't wait to read it. I have to say that Mr. Alvarez can write, and he knows how to put words together. But he doesn't know how to write a story. I kept waiting for things to move together in a way that made for enjoyable reading, but all the time I kept thinking that Mr. Alvarez was writing for himself and not giving any thought to the reader. He lost me in his forced symbolism and his strained surrealism. I guess he's read too many Latin American novelists and he thinks that he's supposed to be mystical. I am sure he'll write a really wonderful short story collection someday, when he's thinking of his readers first. There are rules to writing stories. Mr. Alvarez should learn them. But, it was a good effort.

Mostly moving stories.......2002-06-27

Most of the "fictions" in this interesting collection seem to be fragments of a novel, a novel about the rocky romance of Mark and Dean, told out of chronological sequence and with differing narrators, including that of a homophobic social-climbing San Juan realtor who gets her comeuppance ("Property Values"). I particularly like "Quintessence" and "Other People's Complications"two stories about the impermeability of hearts (gay and straight, respectively.

There are several amusing tales not involving Mark and Dean ("Losing count", "Flatware"). Alas, there are also some failed experimental pieces: "A Small Indulgence", "Rog and Venus Become an Item", and, especially, "Death by bricolage." These are probably their progenitor's favorites, but the stories (in contrast to these "experimental fictions") in the book are well-crafted, insightful, often moving, and sometimes hilarious.

An okay book.......2002-05-29

I honestly did not see anything to rave about this book like some of the other reviews. It was ok, still too literary for me. Some sections seemed to drag on for ever! and I skipped ahead alot. Not a bad book, but I really would not recommend the author to my friends.

Wonderful Monsters.......2002-05-26

In his first short story collection, Aldo Alvarez bounces us from sublime, stripped-down emotion ("Heat Rises" and "Fixing a Shadow") to hilarious, over-the-top surrealism ("Rog & Venus Become an Item" and "Death by Bricolage"). But through it all, we are reminded that we, all of us, search for the same thing: to love and to be loved. I look forward to Alvarez's second collection.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Civil Engineering. Thesis. 1977. M.S

Average customer rating:

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Civil Engineering. Thesis. 1977. M.S
Aldo Alvarez Montalvo
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

Authors:

Authors

Authors