I was interested in the The
Mortifications by Derek Palacio after I saw it was about a Cuban Family. I
am half Cuban myself and am interested in stories about them. The Mortifications is about a family of
four who split up. The father stayed in Cuba while the mother took their twins,
a boy and girl, to America. One thing that sets it apart is that instead of
staying in FL like most did they moved further north to Connecticut. There the
each family member has their own personal struggle that only intensifies when
their father back in Cuba tries to get in touch with them.
Though
the story line itself was interesting I honestly found it quite hard to get
into. The author's style of writing made it difficult to follow along, the conversation
was strangely written with no quotation marks or punctuation, and no description
of how they were speaking. Knowing from firsthand experience how colorful and
energetic Cubans are in their speech the book painted an opposite picture as
though no character had any personality. Because of the way it was written it
was very hard to become attached to the characters. The story moved in a
way that it was hard to tell how much time had passed which not having clear
chapters with names or even just numbers helped to seal that. When I was a
third of the way through it felt like the book should almost be over. And
I have yet to finish it. I would give it a two out of five.
