Tales from the Town of Widows: and Chronicles from the Land of Men: And Chronicles Fom the Land of Men [Paperback]

In the tradition of Laura Esquivel's LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOALTE this stunning debut novel relies on delicious doses of magical realism to entrance the reader into the extraordinary realm of Maraquita, Columbia, a hamlet reborn with visionary ideas of social, political and environmental responsibilites. I became hypnotized with the introduction of these abandonded women whom are forced to re-invent themselves and their society. Employing humor, despair and sometimes shock these tales intoxicate and inspire!

Okay so I saw this book was nominated for a number of gay male book awards and was intrigued as the description says nothing about it being a gay novel, and rightly so, it's not really. I would say it's more of a feminist utopia written by a gay man.

The book is a collection of stories about the women left from a town where all the men were either kidnapped or killed by guerrillas. Interspersed between these stories are short snippets, usually 2 or 3 pages at most, of interviews with guerrillas some of whom where from this town.

As for the gay stuff, there are two chapters devoted to "the other widows", both gay men. One who hid by pretending to be a girl, and still living as a girl, the other who just happened to be at an outlying farm when the guerrillas came to town. Also towards the end of the book some of the women begin to express their love for each other, both physically and emotionally. Most of the book, however, concerns the lives of the women left behind and how they pick themselves up and create a life and town out of the devastation of their consequences.

From here I could go on a tangent about why books with minor or secondary gay content get nominated for gay specific awards when the majority of the book is not gay, but I won't it would take too much time. As for the book, it is well-written and it's obvious the author has talent and has been schooled in the art of writing. Some parts are a little slow and the book drags a bit in the middle, but it does offer an arresting look at the lives of people who live in a country constantly torn by internal strife and warfare written by an emerging new writer.

If you are looking for that kind of story this is the book for you, if you are looking for a gay novel, look elsewhere.

Tales from the Town of Widows and Chronicles from the Land of Men is a feast for anyone who relishes beautiful, intelligent writing infused with humor and humanity.
Set against the backdrop of the Colombian civil war, it tells the story of a group of women living in a remote mountain village who are forced to fend for themselves after a band of Communist guerrillas descends on the village and forcibly recruits all the men, killing those who resist and leading the others away to fight for their cause. The women and children who are left behind must overcome their grief, fear, ignorance and passivity in order to survive and build a new society of their own on the patriarchal rubble of the old.
The book embodies many contradictions without ever pulling at the seams. It is at once lyrical and brutal, subversive and idealistic, satirical and affecting, wickedly funny and profoundly sad. It tackles big issues--religion, politics, sexual politics--but its real power lies in the poignant and often comic humanity of its characters, with their hairy, muscular legs and rectangular bodies, their migrating warts and luxurious mustaches. And those are just the women: the widows, spinsters, prostitutes and virgins who inhabit the town of Mariquita. We are also given, in journalistic chronicles at the end of each chapter, brief and often shocking glimpses of the men and boys doomed to fight in the war, and the civilians caught up in its senseless violence.
The book begins in 1992 and ends, 16 years later, in 1992. (Among the many innovations the women conceive is the concept of female time, which is based on the menstrual cycle and runs backwards. They also end up rejecting religion, making clothing optional and deciding that heterosexuality is over-rated.) Each chapter focuses on a particular woman: Doña Emilia, the madam of the village's whorehouse, who loses all her customers when the men are taken away; Cleotilde Guarnizo, the mannish, mustached schoolteacher with the stomping gait and mysterious past; Francisca viuda de Gómez, the widow who finds a fortune under her bed; Julia Morales, born Julio, whose mother dresses him as a girl to hide him from the guerrillas and who grows up to become the town beauty. But the main character, the unifying force of the village and of the book, is Rosalba viuda de Patiño, the widow of the town's police sergeant. Soon after the men are taken away, Rosalba is appointed Magistrate by a passing government soldier. It falls on her, an uneducated housewife with no leadership experience, to rouse the women from their grief and apathy and restore order, prosperity and hope to the village -- a seemingly impossible task that requires all her ingenuity and determination.
In the end, Rosalba and the other villagers create a new society based on the values of women: harmony, cooperation and respect for every individual, whether female or male, gay or straight, buck naked or wearing a red polka dot dress that's tight in all the right places. And when some of the village's men come home after their 16-year absence and try to reclaim their power and male prerogatives, things get really interesting...