{"id":585,"date":"2010-01-09T14:43:33","date_gmt":"2010-01-09T13:43:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/blog\/?p=585"},"modified":"2016-01-23T20:22:46","modified_gmt":"2016-01-23T19:22:46","slug":"happy-families-carlos-fuentes-bloomsbury-899-331pp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=585","title":{"rendered":"Carlos Fuentes, <em>Happy Families<\/em> (Bloomsbury) \u00a38.99"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One thing connects the sixteen stories in Carlos Fuentes\u2019 <em>Happy Families<\/em>: despair at the state of modern Mexico. The first story\u2019s \u2018family like any other\u2019 live mostly in separate rooms, clinging to fantasy notions of both their country and their chances within it. Elsewhere we see corrupt priests, faded actors, lovers separated by the expectations of their families, a friendless president trapped in the six-year period of his office, a gay couple trying to survive beneath the radar of a disapproving society. There seems little room for hope. The characters strive to maintain merely the illusion of prosperity and contentment, because they know the illusion is the most they will ever attain.<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\">The stories themselves are marked by a range of styles and a willingness to experiment. The narrating subject is often elusive. Time folds back on itself. It\u2019s sometimes unclear whether phrases are spoken or merely thought. When these experiments work well, they\u2019re very effective. At other times, they can leave the reader feeling that the effort required is perhaps not repaid by what the stories give back. In a clinical analysis, the stories too often skirt the territory of bourgeois comedies of manners. Some do have the density of novels that Fuentes will never have the time to write, but others fade from the mind as quickly as the latest instalment of a telenovela.<\/p>\n<p>If the book consisted only of stories, therefore, it would be hard to class this as anything other than a minor offering of an aging writer. However, what gives the book its real power are the sixteen choruses that Fuentes interpolates between the stories. These brief choruses reveal a different, more desperate Mexico. They are the songs of children murdered, of the Salvatrucha gang, of teenage drug dealers, of the victims of sexual abuse, of immigrants struggling to make a life away from the Americanized suburbs of the middle classes. Written as freeform verse and never stretching for more than three pages, they make for deeply uncomfortable and intense reading. They work as a clever and necessary counterpoint to the stories, but one can\u2019t help wishing that Fuentes had turned his eye on these people for the stories themselves. Instead, we get a book that paradoxically mirrors Mexico\u2019s social crisis: the majority of attention is focused on the small middle and upper classes, while the overwhelming numbers of the country\u2019s poor and disenfranchised working class still struggle to have their voices heard equally.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One thing connects the sixteen stories in Carlos Fuentes\u2019 Happy Families: despair at the state of modern Mexico. The first story\u2019s \u2018family like any other\u2019 live mostly in separate rooms, clinging to fantasy notions of both their country and their chances within it. Elsewhere we see corrupt priests, faded actors, lovers separated by the expectations [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[13,283],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.2.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Carlos Fuentes, Happy Families (Bloomsbury) \u00a38.99 - The Manchester Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=585\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Carlos Fuentes, Happy Families (Bloomsbury) \u00a38.99 - The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"One thing connects the sixteen stories in Carlos Fuentes\u2019 Happy Families: despair at the state of modern Mexico. The first story\u2019s \u2018family like any other\u2019 live mostly in separate rooms, clinging to fantasy notions of both their country and their chances within it. Elsewhere we see corrupt priests, faded actors, lovers separated by the expectations [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=585\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Manchester Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-01-09T13:43:33+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2016-01-23T19:22:46+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Nicholas Murgatroyd\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Nicholas Murgatroyd\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=585\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=585\",\"name\":\"Carlos Fuentes, Happy Families (Bloomsbury) \u00a38.99 - The Manchester Review\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2010-01-09T13:43:33+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2016-01-23T19:22:46+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/7d2ce9b323b04c3e741f71523781049a\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=585#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=585\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=585#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Carlos Fuentes, Happy Families (Bloomsbury) \u00a38.99\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/\",\"name\":\"The Manchester Review\",\"description\":\"The Manchester Review\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/7d2ce9b323b04c3e741f71523781049a\",\"name\":\"Nicholas Murgatroyd\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif\",\"caption\":\"Nicholas Murgatroyd\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?author=24\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Carlos Fuentes, Happy Families (Bloomsbury) \u00a38.99 - The Manchester Review","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=585","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Carlos Fuentes, Happy Families (Bloomsbury) \u00a38.99 - The Manchester Review","og_description":"One thing connects the sixteen stories in Carlos Fuentes\u2019 Happy Families: despair at the state of modern Mexico. The first story\u2019s \u2018family like any other\u2019 live mostly in separate rooms, clinging to fantasy notions of both their country and their chances within it. Elsewhere we see corrupt priests, faded actors, lovers separated by the expectations [&hellip;]","og_url":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=585","og_site_name":"The Manchester Review","article_published_time":"2010-01-09T13:43:33+00:00","article_modified_time":"2016-01-23T19:22:46+00:00","author":"Nicholas Murgatroyd","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Nicholas Murgatroyd","Est. reading time":"2 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=585","url":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=585","name":"Carlos Fuentes, Happy Families (Bloomsbury) \u00a38.99 - The Manchester Review","isPartOf":{"@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website"},"datePublished":"2010-01-09T13:43:33+00:00","dateModified":"2016-01-23T19:22:46+00:00","author":{"@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/7d2ce9b323b04c3e741f71523781049a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=585#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=585"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?p=585#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Carlos Fuentes, Happy Families (Bloomsbury) \u00a38.99"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#website","url":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/","name":"The Manchester Review","description":"The Manchester Review","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/7d2ce9b323b04c3e741f71523781049a","name":"Nicholas Murgatroyd","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"http:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/wp-includes\/images\/blank.gif","caption":"Nicholas Murgatroyd"},"url":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/?author=24"}]}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2PuXo-9r","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=585"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5651,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585\/revisions\/5651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.themanchesterreview.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}