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Book Review: ‘Brother Brontë,’ by Fernando A. Flores

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Book Review: ‘Brother Brontë,’ by Fernando A. Flores

“Brother Brontë” is like that mythical sub sandwich with literally everything on it. There are tangential joy rides into Jazzmin Monelle’s other novels, such as “I Was a Teenage Brain Parasite” (one of the great wish-I’d-come-up-with-that titles) and “Ghosts in the Zapotec Sphericals” (which features a Borges-like protagonist, the blind director of the Biblioteca Nacional de Buenos Aires, who, using a red rose and a mirror, saves a distant dying planet, Zapotec, from destruction). There’s a play called “Great Headwounds in Underground Art Movements.” There’s a magical tiger straight outta Bollywood. There are Shakespearean identity switches, assassinations and black markets for every conceivable item (since no consumer goods seem readily available anymore).

This is not a book for the abstemious reader. It’s an all-you-can-eat buffet of sumptuous language to gorge on. The prose can be volatile, gloriously anarchic, levitating off the page:

Turmeric-colored mist had hidden wheels and levers operated by giddy, sadistic gnomes.

Her head felt like it was a tiny head trying to break out of a larger, more oppressive head, and her stomach held smoldering cinders.

Silence. The keys of a piano, ascending like a spiral staircase within the bare bones of a blood-filled mountain. Then a voice. A voice to turn bags of pork cracklings into fig trees.

She pictured the clouds above cracking open like an inflating pig bladder, giving birth to the giant moth that would spray its mouth juices onto Three Rivers.

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That a book can be so oneiric and phantasmagorical and so deeply dialectical at the same time I find pretty amazing. It’s Bosch meets Brecht. Flores is not what one would call a polemical writer. But he seems to ask: Can one be so naïve right now as to maintain our inalienable right to poetry (and to live poetically)? And isn’t there something insurrectionary about that naïveté? There’s an eschatological yearning to “Brother Brontë,” as if losing this world might be our only hope for some last intimacy with it.

Of course, the criminalization of book possession, the notion of reading as taboo, as transgression, would make almost any text that much more titillating. But I must say, from my subterranean lair, hidden from the drones of the chupacabras, that I haven’t read a novel so rambunctiously lyrical and as gloriously evangelical about literature in a long time. Bravo to Brother Brontë himself, Fernando A. Flores.


BROTHER BRONTË | By Fernando A. Flores | MCD/Farrar, Straus & Giroux | 337 pp. | $28

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Try This Quiz on the Real Locations in These Magical and Mysterious Novels

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Try This Quiz on the Real Locations in These Magical and Mysterious Novels

A strong sense of place can deeply influence a story, and in some cases, the setting can even feel like a character itself. This week’s literary geography quiz highlights real-world locations in novels where mystery and magic drive the plot. To play, just make your selection in the multiple-choice list and the correct answer will be revealed. At the end of the quiz, you’ll find links to the books if you’d like to do further reading.

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Try This Quiz on Thrilling Books That Became Popular Movies

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Try This Quiz on Thrilling Books That Became Popular Movies

Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about printed works that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions and more. This week’s challenge highlights thrillers first published as novels (or graphic novels) that were adapted into popular films. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the books and their screen versions.

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Test Your Knowledge of the Authors and Events That Helped Shape the United States

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Test Your Knowledge of the Authors and Events That Helped Shape the United States

Welcome to Lit Trivia, the Book Review’s regular quiz about books, authors and literary culture. In honor of Gen. George Washington’s birthday on Feb. 22, this week’s super-size challenge is focused on the literature and history related to the American Revolution. In the 10 multiple-choice questions below, tap or click on the answer you think is correct. After the last question, you’ll find links to exhibits, books and other materials related to this intense chapter in the country’s story, including an award-winning biography of the general and first U.S. president.

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