Product Details
Simon & Schuster Audio, June 2010
Unabridged Audio Download
ISBN-10: 1442336161
ISBN-13: 9781442336162
Description
The Madonnas of Echo Park is both a grand mural of a Los Angeles neighborhood and an intimate glimpse into the lives of the men and women who struggle to lose their ethnic identity in the pursuit of the American dream. Each chapter summons a different voice—poetic, fierce, comic. We meet Hector, a day laborer who trolls the streets for work and witnesses a murder that pits his morality against his illegal status; his ex-wife Felicia, who narrowly survives a shooting and lands a cleaning job in a Hollywood Hills house as desolate as its owner; and young Aurora, who journeys through her now gentrified childhood neighborhood to discover her own history and her place in the land that all Mexican-Americans dream of, “the land that belongs to us again.”
Reminiscent of Luis Alberto Urrea and Dinaw Mengestu, The Madonnas of Echo Park is a brilliant and genuinely fresh view of American life.
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Winnerof the Pen/Hemingway Award and the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction
"Skyhorse is at his best when exploring the changing world of Echo Park...His careful attention to detail, to a rich past of a place that served as home to Mexican Americans already once displaced from Chavez Ravine, is thoroughly researched and executed-- no easy feat while juggling multiple characters and timeframes...the focus on Mexican American characters is admirable."
-- The Los Angeles Times
"To embrace a community, to capture its fabric, to syncopate its rhythms, lives, views and experiences is a difficult feat. But Brando Skyhorse manages to do just that with his breathtaking and, at times, soul-churning novel...Skyhorse [finds] breadth and diversity in Echo Park...Stories zigzag through the book, introducing lives unique and full, bisecting one another at times, standing at solitary edges at others...we are carried away by this intricately crafted tale. Taken together, the tales spin around the axis of a few streets yet splinter off into infinite dimensions."
-- Chattanooga Times Free Press
“A revelation…the summer’s most original read…extraordinary…The novel is richly detailed, offering varying perspectives that collide into a singular narrative from an evolving neighborhood in the shadow of downtown L.A. (Think Gabriel García Márquez fused with Junot Díaz.)…The immigrant experience may very well be the defining narrative of the United States in the 21st century. When juxtaposed against its literary rival, the self-confession, the results can be breathtaking as exhibited by Skyhorse’s startling author’s note at the start of the book…powerful.”
-- Examiner.com
"Rich and textured...As the intricate tale unwinds, we're offered glimpses of...eight residents, whose ordinary, working-class lives intersect under often extraordinary circumstances...Skyhorse propels the reader through the novel at a breakneck pace. And in each section, readers are rewarded with a deeper layer, and a new connection, that enriches the plot...Skyhorse uses elegant prose and vivid storytelling to tackle questions surrounding culture, belonging, and identity that haunt every immigrant community."
-- The Christian Science Monitor
"If timeliness and social relevance don't sell you on the book, then read it for its beautifully imperfect characters, the wise certainty of its prose, its satisfying emotional heft…Elegantly written...The book cleverly expresses the tangled nature of multicultural identity and the physical geography of off-the-grid Echo Park."
-- The Brooklyn Rail
"Brando Skyhorse writes with great compassion and wit (and a touch of magic) about the lives of people who are often treated as if they are invisible. The stories that make up this novel weave together to create a complex and vivid portrait of a Los Angeles we seldom see in literature or film. The Madonnas of Echo Park is a memorable literary debut."
—Dan Chaon, author of Await Your Reply
—Dan Chaon, author of Await Your Reply
"First-time novelist Skyhorse offers a poignant yet unsentimental homage to Echo Park, a working-class neighborhood in east Los Angeles where everyone struggled to blend in with American society but remains tied to the traditions of Mexico...Essential for fans of Sherman Alexie or Sandra Cisneros but with universal appeal for readers who favor in-depth character-centered stories, this is enthusiastically recommended." - Library Journal (starred review)
"Vivid...Skyhorse excels at building a vibrant community and presenting several perspectives on what it means to be Mexican in America, from those who wonder "how can you lose something that never belonged to you?" to those who miraculously find it."
—Publishers Weekly
—Publishers Weekly
"[V]ivid...These are the people we pass every day and never give much thought. Now Skyhorse demands our attention as he deftly humanizes their stories...Eye-opening and haunting, Skyhorse's novel will jolt readers out of their complacence." —Booklist
"[A] potential best-seller... [Skyhorse] has a way with fiction, as he demonstrates in this lovely debut novel about Mexican-Americans in LA. The engaging storytelling, informed by a keen understanding of contemporary immigrant life, is reminiscent of Junot DÍaz and Chang Rae-Lee." —Vanity Fair
"What does it mean to be a Mexican in America today? Brando Skyhorse tackles this question in his debut novel, The Madonnas of Echo Park. The book...explores questions of identity and belonging." —The Christian Science Monitor, Summer 2010 Reading Guide
"Gritty...a bitersweet love letter to the neighborhood [of Echo Park]." —Los Angeles Magazine
"Culture, identity, and politics are just a few of the threads masterfully woven through The Madonnas of Echo Park...What happens to a neighborhood that's overrun by gentrification and warring intracultural factions? Violence, for one thing—but also, finally, in Skyhorse's indelible storytelling, something that begins to look like hope."—O, The Oprah Magazine
"This first novel tells the intertwining stories of three Mexican-American families in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, from the 1980s to today…As the narrators pass the story backward and forward in time, the characters unknowingly bounce off one another like particles in the Large Hadron Collider." — The New York Times
"Memorable...Brando Skyhorse connects us with voices that typically dwell in the background of everyday Los Angeles life but here are granted license to tell their own harrowing, hair-raising, heartwarming, hilarious and fascinating stories...His character descriptions are ripe with detail; his dialogue impeccable, crafting startlingly poignant moments." —The Seattle Times
"Brando Skyhorse brings a chronically invisible community to sizzling, beguiling life...With this debut novel, Skyhorse has earned comparison to Sherman Alexie, Junot Diaz and Sandra Cisneros...And like those writers, there's little danger Skyhorse will be pigeonholed as an ethnic writer: his work is simply too good...In The Madonnas of Echo Park, Skyhorse claims the disparate elements of his life and spins them into gold." —The Oregonian
#1 Bestseller, The Tattered Cover Bookstore, Denver
Pick of the Week, The Boston Globe
"Wonderful...moving, lyrical...a complex, multifaceted portrait of the community [of Echo Park]." —Washington City Paper
"The work of a significant new voice, full and rich and richly subtle…. "Rules of the Road" is filled with so much texture and detail and humanity and the kind of weirdness that seems utterly true and believable [and] the rest of the [book is] filled with the same qualities…Also, for a man, Skyhorse has an amazing eye and ear for the way women talk, look, behave — and think and feel….Brando Skyhorse's first book is the real deal."
-- Chauncey Mabe, Open Page.com, Florida Center for the Literary Arts
Wall Street Journal Online, January 30, 2011
...The publisher Free Press is betting that Brando Skyhorse's novel "The Madonnas of Echo Park" will be a story of two covers: one that worked and one that didn't. Continue reading » Join the conversation about ...
Six Thousand, January 2, 2011
...book voucher. The VERY INGREDIENTS OF SUMMER! We asked our writers to recommend some reading... Tim Scott The Madonnas of Echo Park , by Brando Skyhorse. As well as having an author with the best name in the history of literature, this ...
Asbury Park Press, June 6, 2010
...pachyderms. OK, the book is a tad long, but "It" is a subject worth exploring in depth. THE MADONNAS OF ECHO PARK by Brando Skyhorse (Free Press, $23) Can anyone really resist the author's name? We can't. This debut novel is set in the Echo ...
USA Today, May 26, 2010
...The book The Madonnas of Echo Park By Brando Skyhorse Free Press, $23, out Tuesday What it's about: Debut novel set in a Mexican neighborhood in Los Angeles, where a dozen girls, acting ...
PublishersWeekly.com, April 5, 2010
...and fearless—that readers into the darker end of the literary spectrum won't want to miss. (June) The Madonnas of Echo Park Brando Skyhorse. Free Press, $23 (224p) ISBN 978-1-4391-7080-9 Skyhorse maps in his vivid debut the spirit of ...
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