#7 Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros

Hurray! I did 7 books in March! I only have 43 more to go. Wooo! Ahem, back to business. I had high hopes for this book. I really like Woman Hollering Creek, but have sadly never read The House on Mango Street. When I began this, I was really interested but perhaps due to literary overload, my interest dropped off. It took a bit time to finish and the middle was strangely narrated. It took me longer than I want to admit figuring out what the heck was going on with the second part's narration structure. I liked the beginning and the end but the middle, not so much. I usually like weird time lines (see here) but this seemed too disjointed to me and the end was pretty cheesy too, come to think of it.

I like the idea of a huge immigrant Mexican family's history and experiences being told by the only daughter and I got really excited when she mentioned places in Mexico City that I saw last summer but I was kind of disappointed in the novel as a whole. Celaya's, the narrator, retelling of American and Mexican history is pretty darned humorous, especially when talking about popular culture but I don't think it makes up for the sagging middle.