LITERATURE
Biblioteca News December 28, 2007 San Miguel de Allende

La Tienda manager

Biblioteca Pública seeks manager for La Tienda

Requirements: responsible, bilingual, computers programs: Excel, Word, QuickBooks and/or other accounting systems, sales experience essential, Mexicans only.

Send your resume to gm@bibliotecasma.com with a request for an interview.

Scheduled appointments only.

Happy Holidays!

The Biblioteca Pública and associated services will be open from 10am to 2pm only on December 31 and will be closed January 1. Due to printing schedules, Atención offices will be closed December 31 and January 1 and 2.

Book Fever
By Marcia Loy

What I’ve been reading

That is a good book which is opened with expectation, and closed with delight and profit.

—Amos Bronson Alcott

Here are some of the books I read recently and loved. All the books mentioned in this column are in the library.

A Far Cry From Kensington, Muriel Spark, 1988. This is a book my club got from Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust. I loved this story from prolific English author Spark, most famous for writing The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. The setting is London in the 1950s. It features a charming heroine, sparkling dialogue and is set in the world of book publishing.

Excerpt: Generally I got to the office between half-past nine and quarter to ten in the morning. The clock in the big general office was unreliable, and because of a chronic lack of ready cash was likely to remain so. I think that if a clock is not punctual you can’t expect the people who live with it to be so. We were all fairly lax about time as the business more and more declined. Patrick, the packer and sorter, was most often the first to arrive, and it was he who would take the first phone calls. I don’t know if my memory exaggerates but, looking back, it seems to me that almost every morning I would find Patrick on the phone, shouting to cover his embarrassment and inability to cope with the caller’s problem. At that hour the caller was usually an author and the problem was money. Later in the morning, just before noon, the printers and binders would have their hour; their problem too was money, bills unpaid. And certainly, till the bills were paid, there was no hope of sending more books to press.

Being Dead, Jim Crace, 1999. When I tell you the plot of this novel by award-winning English writer Jim Crace, you’ll think it’s going to be awful. But it’s one of the most beautifully written books I’ve read. The book begins when the bodies of a married couple are discovered on the salt dunes of Baritone Bay.

Excerpt: Joseph’s grasp on Celice’s leg had weakened as he’d died. But still his hand was touching her, the grainy pastels of her skin, one fingertip among her baby ankle hairs. Their bodies had expired, but anyone could tell—just look at them—that Joseph and Celice were still devoted. For while his hand was touching her, curved round her shin, the couple seemed to have achieved that peace the world denies, a period grace, defying even murder. Anyone who found them there, so wickedly disfigured, would nevertheless be bound to see that something of their love had survived the death of cells. The corpses were surrendered to the weather and the earth, but here were still a man and wife, quietly resting; flesh and flesh; dead, but not departed yet.

The Queen of the Tambourine by Jane Gardam, 1991. Although English writer Gardam has written several books, this is the only one the library has. It’s a great one though, and like me, you may want to read more of her work. The story is told in a series of letters from Eliza Peabody to her neighbor Joan, a woman she hardly knows, who has left her husband and children. This novel won the Whitbread Novel Award.

Excerpt (opening of book):

Dear Joan,

I do hope I know you well enough to say this.

I think you ought to try to forget about your leg. I believe that it is something psychological, psychosomatic, and it is very hard on Charles. It is bringing both him and you into ridicule and spoiling your lives.

Do make a big try. Won’t you? Forget about your bodily aches and pains. Life is a wonderful thing, Joan. I have discovered this great fact in my work with the dying.

Your sincere friend,

Eliza (Peabody)


The Bird Artist by Howard Norman, 1994. This engaging, quirky and imaginative novel is set in a small coastal Newfoundland village. This is the book Sara Nelson admitted trying to finish at a Harry Potter movie (see column of 11/30/07.) I’d read it again just for the names he uses both for major characters and those mentioned only in passing: Lambert Charibon, Boas LaCotte, Isaac Sprague, Dalton and Romeo Gillette, Llewellyn Boxer, Laslow Sprunt and my personal favorite, Odeon Sloo.

First paragraph: My name is Fabian Vas. I live in Witless Bay, Newfoundland. You would not have heard of me. Obscurity is not necessarily failure, though; I am a bird artist, and have more or less made a living at it. Yet I murdered the lighthouse keeper, Botho August, and that is an equal part of how I think of myself.

The House in Paris, Elizabeth Bowen, 1935. This atmospheric novel struck me as very modern, yet it was written 72 years ago. It involves a visit to the title house by a little girl named Henrietta who is on her way somewhere else. Also at the house that day is Leopold who is going to meet his mother for the first time. And the grownups they visit have interesting secrets.

Excerpt: Leopold, whom the ever possible fate of little girls in Paris did not concern, looked at her curiously. Now he had said so much his excitement eased a little: he felt a cloudy liking for Henrietta and began to be glad she was in the room. Her matter of fact manner made him feel less extraordinary. At the Villa Fioretta, outside Spezia, the solicitude of his relations by adoption, his aunts Sally and Marian and his uncle Dee, who was at the same time his tutor, drove him into a frenzy about himself. He was over-understood. The repercussions of all that he said and did echoed through the hollow rooms of the village, and he knew too well these people found him remarkable.

Next month: Classic English mysteries. Read a good one lately? If you’d like to share it with Atencion readers, please email me a few lines about the book, along with the author’s name and copyright date to marciabookfever@hotmail.com. Happy reading.

Marcia Loy is a member of the steering committee of the Authors’ Sala and a volunteer at the Biblioteca Pública.

An interview with Rebecca Walker
By Gina Hyams

When I announced I was going to build a house, I was given advice from all fronts, and I took none of it. Everyone I spoke to seemed to have a horror story they were too eager to share—fights with architects, contractors, new neighbors, etc.

Bestselling author Rebecca Walker will give the keynote address at the San Miguel Writers’ Conference, February 22–24, 2008. Her books include Baby Love: Choosing Motherhood after a Lifetime of Ambivalence and Black, White, and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self. Named by Time magazine as one of the 50 most influential American leaders under 40, the award was followed by many others, including the Women Who Could Be President Award from the League of Women Voters and an honorary doctorate from the North Carolina School of the Arts. She is the daughter of novelist Alice Walker and civil rights attorney Mel Leventhal and now lives in Hawaii with her three-year-old son and his father. For more information about her work, see www.rebeccawalker.com. 

Gina Hyams: What’s your writing schedule like? Do you have a favorite place to write or any creativity-inducing rituals?

Rebecca Walker: Since having my son, I have had to throw a lot of my ideas about where and when to write out the window. I now write anywhere I can charge my laptop: the bed, the sofa, a chair in the backyard. I also write in hotels more lately and try to build a few extra days for writing into my lecture schedule. My other trick is to wait until I really know what I want and need to say. Then I add a few months onto that until I can’t contain it anymore. The urgency makes me write faster.

GH: You’ve been extremely brave about delving into and revealing your complex personal truths in your memoirs and you’ve paid dearly for doing so. You wrote in Baby Love that your mother was so furious about what you wrote in Black, White, and Jewish that she disinherited you. Was it worth it? Is it worth it?

RW: Well, it certainly wasn’t the best financial decision I’ve ever made! Because my mother is such a powerhouse in the industry (think Oprah and many others) and people take sides, the estrangement has had a serious impact on my career and the resources available to me.

Access aside, as millions of people know, my mother is a tremendous human being and I love and respect her deeply. The rub is that, like her, I’m a writer: My life is my material. It’s an issue all writers deal with: Is it possible to tell my story without hurting others? What happens to the world of letters if writers only write what is acceptable? What’s the point of writing if you can’t be truthful?

Some of my favorite memoirists—women like Anais Nin, Simone de Beauvoir, Audre Lorde, Diane DiPrima, Marguerite Duras, Susanna Kaysen, bell hooks, Lucy Grealy, asha bandele and others—didn’t write what made everyone comfortable. They wrote what they needed to write, and the truth of their expression stands the test of time. I hope my work does the same.

So I guess that’s a yes. It is worth it. And the cost is tremendous. I often tell writers in my workshops that their biggest fear about telling their story can come true: You can lose the people you love the most. But, as many of those same writers like to tell me, the opposite is also true: You can become closer to the people you love; telling your story can be a cathartic place of healing. I thought that would be true for me and my family. So far, not so much. But there is still time. I’ll never close the door.

GH: You’ve edited three nonfiction anthologies and contributed to at least 20 others. Why do you think anthologies as a genre became so popular? What’s your new anthology about? I hear there’s a local author in it.

RW: The first anthology I read was This Bridge Called My Back by the late Chicana writer Gloria Anzaldua, and my all-time favorite is We Are the Stories We Tell. The genre endures because it fulfills a human longing to see the world from different points of view, all at once. And then there is the fact that collections are like parties for introverts: You meet the most fascinating people without having to leave the house. It’s the original virtual community.

My new anthology is about new family configurations. It’s called Walk This Way: Introducing the New American Family. It’s about all the ways people are living these days: from birthing at home without a midwife, living polyamorously and inviting the nanny to be a full-fledged family member, to co-housing, transracial adoption and intercultural ex-pat life. San Miguel de Allende resident Susan McKinney de Ortega is covering that last topic, and I’m thrilled to include her essay about moving to San Miguel, falling in love and starting what to some may seem like a nontraditional family.

GH: Have you been in San Miguel de Allende before? If so, what is the first experience you look forward to having upon each return?

RW: This will be my first trip to San Miguel de Allende, though my mother owns a house in Mexico and I’ve spent over two decades going back and forth. The country is in my blood. I’m looking forward to speaking Spanish, a language I love, and eating carne asada with beans and rice. I’m looking forward to the light, the warmth of the people and the focus on family rather than consumerism. I’m looking forward to architectural beauty and diversity. And of course, I am looking forward to meeting some wonderful writers.

Gina Hyams ( www.ginahyams.com ) will teach travel writing at the 2008 San Miguel Writers’ Conference. Her books include Mexicasa and In a Mexican Garden, and she co-edited Searching for Mary Poppins.

Folk art—Fact, fiction and fun
By Deb Hall and Martha Egan

Reading and Book Signing
Martha Egan
Sun, Dec 30, noon–4pm
Zócalo Folk Art
Hernández Macías 110
(415) 152-0663

New Mexico author Martha Egan will be on hand at Rick and Deb Hall’s store, Zócalo Folk Art, to sign her new novel, Coyota. She’ll read the lively fireworks-imbued chapter set on the plaza in San Miguel de Allende on New Year’s Eve. All of Egan’s four books will be available for sale at the event.

Coyota is a fierce and funny, fast-paced 173-page thriller. New Mexico native Nena Herrera-Casey, a part-time Spanish teacher and flea market vendor, overhears a conversation at the Albuquerque customs office she wasn’t meant to hear: rogue DEA agents conspiring to deliberately crash a private plane piloted by one of her former students. The door opens, the DEA cops see Nena, she sees them, and the chase is on. At Christmas, when she and her new boyfriend, Cal, travel to Mexico on vacation, she soon realizes that the American federales are tailing them. Cal is oblivious, and easily falls into the traps set by the bad cops, who want to intimidate Nena and nail them on phony drug charges.

Coyota richly illustrates Mexico’s charms, foibles and idiosyncrasies, and the comedy that can result from cultural misunderstandings. Mexico City, San Miguel and Guanajuato figure prominently.

An importer for over three decades, Egan owns Latin American folk art gallery Pachamama, on Canyon Road in Santa Fe. Though Clearing Customs was her first novel, it was not her first book. In 1991, the Museum of New Mexico Press published Milagros: Votive Offerings from the Americas; and in 1994, Relicarios: Devotional Miniatures from the Americas. She has also written essays for museum catalogs, books and magazines in the US, Mexico and Italy. Since 2002, The Santa Fe New Mexican has published her travel articles and photographs. Egan lectures on Latin American folk art and appraises museum and private collections throughout the US. 

Egan’s interest in Latin American folk art began in the mid-sixties in Mexico City, where she was a student at the Universidad de las Américas. She graduated in 1967 with a bachelor’s degree in Latin American history, then spent two years as a Peace Corps volunteer working with credit unions in rural Venezuela.

In addition to her literary and retail pursuits, Martha is an environmentalist, serving on the Corrales Air Toxics Task Force. She is a gardener, a foreign languages enthusiast and a foodie. She enjoys world travel, bicycling along the Rio Grande and being “Tia Marta” to her 40 nieces and nephews. Egan grew up in De Pere, Wisconsin and is a rabid Packers fan. Her home is in semi-rural New Mexico, where she lives with the ghost of an old cat.

Zócalo is pleased to introduce “Martha’s fun fiction side” to folk art lovers who are no doubt fans of her highly regarded titles on milagros and relicarios. In addition to appearing in San Miguel on December 30, Egan also will read in Ajijic on Wednesday, January 9 at 10:45am at the Lake Chapala Society and in Guanajuato at an as-yet-undetermined location on January 4 or 5.