Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Sep 2010
224 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
National Book Award finalist Cristina García delivers a powerful and gorgeous novel about the intertwining lives of the denizens of a luxurious hotel in an unnamed Central American capital in the midst of political turmoil. The lives of six men and women converge over the course of one week. There is a Japanese-Mexican-American matadora in town for a bull-fighting competition; an ex-guerrilla now working as a waitress in the hotel coffee shop; a Korean manufacturer with an underage mistress ensconced in the honeymoon suite; an international adoption lawyer of German descent; a colonel who committed atrocities during his country's long civil war; and a Cuban poet who has come with his American wife to adopt a local infant.
With each day, their lives become further entangled, resulting in the unexpected—the clash of histories and the pull of revenge and desire. Cristina García's magnificent orchestration of politics, the intimacies of daily life, and the frailty of human nature unfolds in a moving, ambitious, often comic, and unforgettable tale.
"The sultry atmosphere, dash of the supernatural, and well-developed characters are a winning mix, and the story's many parts move with frictionless ease." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. Garcia strides and twirls with a matador's daring, grace, and focus as she enters the psyches of diverse, intense, and unnerving characters...[a] sharply imagined novel of caustic social critique concentrates the horrors of oppression and violence into a compulsively readable tale of coiled fury and penetrating insight." - Booklist
"More successful as a sequence of character portraits than a full narrative ... remains short of a larger sense of narrative unity." –Kirkus
"With its multicharacter story line and subject matter, this book recalls Roberto Bolano's 2666 and the novels of Julia Alvarez, and will appeal to readers who enjoyed those books." - Library Journal
"In this novel of many hearts and voices, Cristina GarcÍa enchants us with the lyricism and humor and political engagement that we've come to expect from her work. Thank goodness the Lady matador has opened her extraordinarily fascinating hotel to all of us via Cristina's keen eye and gorgeous prose." - Edwidge Danticat, author of The Dew Breaker
This information about The Lady Matador's Hotel was first featured
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Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Christina García is the author of four novels: Dreaming in Cuban, The Agüero Sisters, Monkey Hunting, and A Handbook to Luck. García's work has been nominated for a National Book Award and translated into a dozen languages. She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Writers' Award, a Hodder Fellowship at Princeton University, and an NEA grant, among others. She is currently the artistic director for the Centrum Writers Exchange in Port Townsend, Washington and has taught literature and writing at numerous universities. In 2009-10, she will be a Visiting Professor and a Black Mountain Institute Teaching Fellow in Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
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