TEQUILA: A Story of Success, Love & Violence, a story of family, business, and love

TEQUILA: A Story of Success, Love & Violence
TIM REUBEN
Meridian Editions (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$19.95 paperback, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Tequila is the gripping saga of three generations of the Ramirez family. From Sotero Ramirez's humble beginnings to his struggle for success, he and his family must overcome a harsh environment plus the frequent deadly encounters with Mexican drug cartels.

Still, the family's tequila business blossoms into a multi-billion-dollar international conglomerate, and his granddaughter Maria is chosen to manage the company, which relocates from Mexico to downtown Manhattan. But she is plagued by the peccadillos of her L.A.-based brother Tomaso, and the evil scheming of her other brother, Miami-based Miguel, who bring their family business to the brink of ruin and even threaten the lives of Maria and the adversary she falls in love with, Los Angeles lawyer Brian Youngman.

This fascinating intrigue spans the globe, from the farms of Tequila, Mexico, to the skyscrapers of New York, from bayside mansions in Miami to law courts in Los Angeles, jet-setting to the Cayman Islands, the moors of Scotland, Jamaica's beaches, and financial centers in Paris. The story unfolds in unpredictable and at times tragic ways.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: I did not want to like this story as much as I did. The prose is not excellent, nor is it incompetent; instead, it leaves little to no impression of itself after consuming it.

So why rate it this high? I got wrapped up in the many characters' intertwining lives, their very shady-but-legal wranglings as they determinedly, doggedly built a business of consequence out of an agricultural product. It's quite a fascinating feat to create a "brand" out of a commodity. We live in the time of brands, and mostly we're not examining the ide behind them.

Tim Reuben examines that feat, using as his lens the drive of a family's natural desire to make more for themselves, their people, than simply surviving on doing basic-to-existence work. I had a task to keep the dramatis personae straight. I honestly put a lot of that on Tim, because it's not always clear who's speaking...no one really has A Voice in the literary sense. Some catchphrases, but that's the sitcom version of A Voice.

Resolving María, our root-for character's, dilemma, and seeing her wrestling with the eternal "is family more important than morality?" dilemma, makes this a very worthwhile read. Do not expect to be thrilled by the writing and it becomes a much more exciting story. I just wish it was a better novel. Maybe his next one will be.

SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND, trauma victim’s voyage of discovery

SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND
JENNINE CAPÓ CRUCET
Simon & Schuster
$27.99 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.25* of five

The Publisher Says: Scarface meets Moby-Dick in this groundbreaking, darkly comic novel about a young man’s attempt to capitalize on his mother’s murky legacy—a story steeped in Miami’s marvelous and sinister magic.

Failed Pitbull impersonator Ismael Reyes—you can call him Izzy—might not be the Scarface type, but why should that keep him from trying? Growing up in Miami has shaped him into someone who dreams of being the King of the 305, with the money, power, and respect he assumes comes with it. After finding himself at the mercy of a cease-and-desist letter from Pitbull’s legal team and living in his aunt’s garage-turned-efficiency, Izzy embarks on an absurd quest to turn himself into a modern-day Tony Montana.

When Izzy’s efforts lead him to the tank that houses Lolita, a captive orca at the Miami Seaquarium, she proves just how powerful she and the water surrounding her really are—permeating everything from Miami’s sinking streets to Izzy’s memories to the very heart of the novel itself. What begins as Izzy’s story turns into a super-saturated fever dream as sprawling and surreal as the Magic City, one as sharp as an iguana’s claws, and as menacing as a killer whale’s teeth. As the truth surrounding Izzy’s boyhood escape from Cuba surfaces, the novel reckons with the forces of nature, with the limits and absence of love, and with the dangers of pursuing a tragic inheritance. Wildly narrated and expertly rendered, Say Hello to My Little Friend is Jennine Capó Crucet’s most daring, heart-breaking, and fearless book yet.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Izzy is as average a guy as you will ever find. He has a crazy-ass inner life which suggests to him that making a living as a Pitbull impersonator:

...so we have a visual lock on Izzy from the off. Though, speaking of "off," the novel opens with Izzy getting his life rearranged by a lawyerly letter telling him to cease-and-desist with the Pitbull-y stuff. Now he has to figure out a way to make a living, and a life. Where is his family, you ask. Nowhere. He’s got none.

That central reality, that lack of mooring chains, allows Izzy to follow his inner voice’s promptings to do the absolute most batshit-crazy nonsense...remember he *was* a Pitbull impersonator until forced not to be...like, oh, let’s say, model the entire rest of his life on the character in the film Scarface.

Follow the links, notice the patterns...this is not random pop-cultural detritus the author has randomly picked up.

Then comes the plot twist Lolita the Orca. How in the name of all that is holy did an ORCA show up in a novel about a Cuban-American man’s identity crisis?!

You really need to follow those links. Do some surface-scratching into the culture not already familiar to you. The word "reggaeton" will enter your vocabulary painlessly this way, and you will need it and the ideas it fronts for to wedge into your brain. The world is changing, and unless you intend to try to stop it by joining the banners and deniers on the radical right, you had best expend some brainergy getting convesrant with Izzy and his world.

Do it painlessly by reading this novel. Moby-Dick was nowhere near this much fun to read, and Izzy beats Ishmael all hollow as a cicerone through all things whale-y. The resonances with the culture of the past make the culture of this century accessible for us midcentury moderns. The read is fun, it’s fast, it’s trenchant...it’s saying a lot more than the words mean.

Isn’t that more or less a novel’s brief? This one does make you work. It requires some effort to get the pop-cultural zeitgeist. It does not pretend to be all about you and center your experience. That novel exists in droves, elsewhere. THIS novel takes you inside the head of a man so traumatized by his past that he can not afford to go deep into anything. This novel parses the cost of cheap thrills and entertainment. The plot, the spine, is the voyage of discovery that we take with Izzy. Like any voyage of discovery, it is not a straight line from start to finish, so douse that expectation right away. Go on the trip as Author Crucet planned it and it will reward you with knowledge and information about the world of a trauma survivor. That can only be a net gain to your own world, because you are statistically likely to know a trauma survivor.

You might not know it yet, but you could easily pick up on signs you would not have seen before if you get your hooks into this story and its meanings.