Montemayor, Carlos

Kaneohe. 1995. Plover Press. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 0917635167. Introduction by Carlos Fuentes. Translated from the Spanish by Dale Carter & Alfonso Gonzalez. 112 pages. hardcover. Cover Illustration by Mirta Toledo. Cover Design by Design etc. keywords: Literature Translated Mexico Latin America . FROM THE PUBLISHER - BLOOD RELATIONS is the story of Refugio, whose family has worked in the mines of Northern Mexico for generations. His grandfather dies of silicosis, while his father is reduced to part-time work, but Refugio plans to follow in their footsteps. He takes it as rejection when his brother, Antonio, refuses to let him enter the mines. Then Antonio, too, begins spitting blood, and once more the pageantry of flowers and a black casket repeats itself. Refugio has been saved, but only to know the agony of watching helplessly as the one who sacrificed himself slowly wastes away. To read BLOOD RELATIONS is to know the daily round of the miners, which runs to such trivia as cigarettes, sex, sleep, food, money, and a sort of divine communion which occurs in the silence before a blast. A native of the mining region of which he writes, Montemayor comments indirectly through parodies of the sacrament of extreme unction, in which forgiveness is asked for things no ordinary human could have possibly avoided doing: preferring the smell of the rain, the grass, the river to the acrid odor of God. ‘May God forgive you for living,' he says at one point. ‘Had you repented of the life God gave you, He would have given you silence and repose sooner.' Implicit in Blood Relations is a view of the human condition as predetermined, tragic, and above all self-contradictory. It is a story of social injustice raised to the level of poetry. inventory #21307 ISBN: 0917635167.