Swift as Desire (Hardcover)

Jubilo seems to have had every virtue: as son, father and friend, his gifts of communication, generosity and warmth were legion. And if his characterisation as husband leans rather too heavily on adoringly possessive Latin who makes love like a divine demon--well, let's overlook the stereotyping. His passion for his wife Lucha and their two children, his dedication to his work as a telegraph operator and his general bon vivance made him a man for all worlds. And yet, and yet... a photograph found by chance leads Lluvia to the heart of the matter.

Esquivel's frequent, interspersed reflections and observations, intruding on the narrative flow, tilt towards the trite and obvious, and are often surprisingly clumsily expressed. But the award-winning author of the bestselling Like Water for Chocolate presents her characters with such affection and zest, and such bountiful sensuality, that the book's shortcomings can be overlooked. --Ruth Petrie

Review
From the bestselling author of Like Water for Chocolate comes another magical fable, this time about a South American telegraph operator. Written in honour of her father Jubilio, who held the same profession, Esquivel's new story concerns one Jubilo, a boy who is born with the gift of happiness and of innately understanding people's wishes, those that often go unarticulated. It's an invaluable if unusual skill and as a boy he mends the rift between his mother and grandmother (each of whom speaks a different language) by translating what will appease rather than inflame a highly combustible situation. Later, as an adult, he often chooses to wire messages containing the unspoken desires in someone's heart rather than the more prosaic reality. It's only with his beloved wife Lucha that his uncanny intuition strangely falters and leads him into dangerous waters that threaten their relationship. As the novel begins Jubilo, now an old man, lies dying, inexplicably estranged from his wife as his daughter Lluvia tries to discover the cause of the rift between her once devoted parents. using the same methods once employed by her father, she finds that beneath a cool facade there is every reason to nurture hope and the novel's unashamedly emotional conclusion will leave few unaffected. Written in the third person. the last pages return to the intimate, first person perspective of the opening chapter as Esquivel pays affectionate homage to her own father. It's a romantic, bittersweet tale of real charm and spirituality that emphasises the importance of communication and the corrosive effect that secrets can have upon a relationship. Leavened by wit and a sensual appreciation that threads its way beguilingly through the narrative, it's a refreshingly original meditation on the way in which the world can, both literally and metaphorically, be transformed through the revelatory power of love. (Kirkus UK)

A tender and thoughtful, if at times rather stilted, tale of a Mexican telegraph operator, by the megaselling author best known for her debut novel, "Like Water for Chocolate "(1992). Don Jubilo was blessed at birth with almost supernatural hearing and an instinctive understanding of all kinds of communication, from an insect's faint rustle to the sweet sighs of a woman in love. His odd gift is noted by his Mayan grandmother, dona Itzel, who quarrels with his Spanish grandmother, dona Jesusa, over the best way to raise him. Dona Itzel takes him to visit Mayan ruins, explaining the hieroglyphics and number dots as best she can to the impressionable boy, who is entranced by the Mayan notion of the galaxy as a resonating matrix in which the transformation of information occurs instantly. Jubilo is equally intrigued by a history lesson centering on an intrepid telegraph operator, a profession he later takes up to support his young wife Lucha, despite his dreams of becoming a singer. In the era before telephone services, interpreting Morse code messages for villagers and rich landowners alike puts Jubilo at the center of many lives as his own falls slowly and inexorably apart. Lucha, the spoiled youngest daughter of a wealthy family, is distressed by their relative poverty and her inability to conceive again after their first child, Raul, is born. Jubilo does the best he can, but his weakness for alcohol gets the better of him. Years later, a second son, Ramiro, accidentally suffocates one night when his father, in a drunken stupor, doesn't hear the baby's cries. Lucha demands a divorce, although she is pregnant with daughter Lluvia, who grows up to write the story of Jubilo's life. Irony of ironies: he is bedridden and mute from Parkinson's disease, no longer able to communicate at all. An imaginative, lyrical fictional memoir, it seems, of the author's own father. (Interesting note: Gabriel Garcia Marquez's father was also a telegraph operator, although the short piece he did recently was much less moony than Esquivel's.) (Kirkus Reviews)

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