Montero, Mayra. Captain of the Sleepers. Translated by Edith Grossman. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2002.
Reason read: Hostos Day in Puerto Rico is on January 11th.
This is a very quick read. Once you get into it you won’t be able to put it down, and luckily because of its length you won’t have to. This is the story of Andreas Yasin who has carried a grudge against family friend J.T. Bunker for his entire adult life. Believing Bunker betrayed his family by having an affair with his mother when he was a small boy, Andreas seeks revenge against the now 83 year old man dying of cancer. But what is reality and what is just a childish memory? Set in the time of the Puerto Rican Independence movement politics permeate Andreas’s world.
Best line, “There is nothing more predictable for a mother than her own child” (p 127).
I know I’ve said this before but I am always amazed when my hometown of Monhegan is mentioned somewhere. I knew something was up when Montero gave one of her characters the home town of Port Clyde, Maine.
Author fact: Mayra Montero wrote one of my earliest Early Review books for LibraryThing, Dancing to ‘Almendra’ back in 2007.
Author trivia: I’m guessing Montero likes cats. The photograph of her on the dust jacket of Captain has a picture of her with a beautiful cat on her lap, only she looks like she is trying to strangle it!
Book trivia: I read this in one insomnia fueled night. It’s only 180 pages long.
Nancy said: Nancy has more to say about the translator than the book.
BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Cavorting Through the Caribbean: Puerto Rico (p 57).
~*LunaSea*~ 