| A Review
of the IPPY finalist book Dreams
and Other Ailments/Sueños y otros achaques by Teresa
Bevin
Reviewed
by Julian Gabriel Colado, Editor, WriteToday.com
This
collection of short stories captures the reader's imagination
from the first words of the first story, "For many nights,
I dreamt of dead people." We are drawn in to the ordinary
lives of ordinary people who by the time we finish the story has
become extraordinary.
Teresa
Bevin is the Cuban Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Her book is a
collection of family stories, baring for all the conflicting
feelings that both bind and pull families apart. Rafaela, in Sea
of Words, says of her husband, "In a spot in the middle of
her forehead, almost between her eyes, she sometimes felt a
slight vibration. If she concentrated enough, she could
inexplicably capture the essence of her husband's thoughts, and
even his feelings. But only if she concentrated enough, if she
cared enough." Here she delicately shows the lives of two
very tired people bound to each other by a force whose origin
neither can remember.
She
paints a poignant portrait of her country. Before we know it, we
are smelling strong Cuban coffee, lilac perfume, and feeling the
humid air cling to our skin. Her characters have a hard life
from which they eek an unexpected joy.
Her
book is a quilt that we are lucky to have been able to wrap
ourselves in for a few brief hours.
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