The Orange Tree [Hardcover]

Something magical connects the five distinct stories which comprise 'The Orange Tree'. They read like the jumbled fragments of a beautiful, disorienting dream. Fuentes offers glimpses of remarkable events - the firey fall of the Aztecs, the sexual death of a fading film star, a Roman siege - and makes their ugliness beautiful. All the while, he weaves a delicate web of connective tissue, turning 'The Orange Tree' into a remarkably cohesive tapestry of Latin American history and culture. Surreal, haunting and elegant, this book reads like a vision.

There is a certain poetic fusion connecting the five novellas found in this fine book of short stories that is like a disconnected dream you might experience upon waking. Carlos Fuentes delivers his verbal barrage and assault upon everything that has created the modern Mexican. He delves into his historical replays with witty insight, carefully ripping apart the sacred past with tongue in cheek imagery that is funny and thought provoking at once. After reading some passages you will go back and read them again for the sheer eloquence and beauty of the masterful use of language. Fuentes says things in such a way that even things that should offend you are so profound in their simplistic articulation that you have to chuckle. Fuentes delivers his message in suttle ways but with an impact that gets under your skin, enveloping and seducing you in his recreations that are colorful and walk off the pages taking you on a wonderful journey as only he can. Even tough the stories are unrelated they somehow feel like the greater part of the whole. I found all the stories to be different, completly entertaining with the exception of one. This is probably my own personal taste but I had trouble getting into "The Two Numantias," quite possibly because of my not being as familiar with the subjects. However, when Fuentes is talking about La Malinche, Cortes, Chapultepec, Cortes , the Spanish conquerors and the Aztecs, often in hyterically hyped imagery, the results are as familiar as frijoles and tortillas. Carlos Fuentes often writes in a hyper sexual mode as is evident in "Apollo and the Whores" where the sexual escapades are rated xxx but have an erotic texture that somehow make them less raw; besides his hilarious and outrageous narrative dominates and makes you laugh at the outlandsih scenarios. This book of five short stories is definitely recommended for someone not familiar with Carlos Fuentes. As one of Mexico's most brilliant and prolific writers, Fuentes demonstrates why he is one of the best Latin American writers. If you are unfamiliar with Fuentes this might be a good place to start since the stories are short and give a good indication of his writing style; if you don't like a particular novella you can always skip it. However if you do like Fuentes and want to read more than I would recommend "Christopher Unborn," "The Death of Artemio Cruz, " "The Good Conscience," or more recently the epic books "The years With Laura Diaz" or "The Buried Mirror." I'll end this review or suggestive prodding of you to read Carlos Fuentes by borrowing verse from a Fuentes scene involving two singers, one singing in Nahuatl another in Castilian."We've only come to dream, and the words flow far from the valley, into a distant sea where the silent rivers of life come to a halt. The narrative continues and the singing ends without ending: "My flowers will never end,
My songs will never end.
I raise them up,
I am only the singer......."

The Orange Tree is a book of unusual beauty. Fuentes, once again playing the historian, presents a reiteration of Latin American history which is utterly convincing as a piece of pure mythology. This perhaps lies in Fuentes' uncanny ability to assign either perfect charm or horrifying ugliness to so much of what he describes: the spectacular fall of the Aztec Empire; the complex seige of a Spanish city by the Romans; the dreamlike arrival of Columbus to a ambivilant paradise.

The five novellas of The Orange Tree offer the reader voices which seem to speak from beyond life and history. We are presented tales of death and suffering in a context so huge, so ambitious, that Fuentes has destroyed the barriers of history and constructed a reality all his own. The lavishness of his vision is hypnotic.

Read this book with abandon; allow its mythology to consume you.