Tujunga (Book) - 4/30/2018 11:30:15 AM
A Daring Novel that Delivers
Tujunga by Carlos Alvarado is a rich, daring, and exciting novel. Alvarado has weaved an eloquent and emotionally powerful narrative that tells an American story in all its beauty and corruptions. Bounding across time and space, Tujunga connects the genetic investigations by Xochi Arias in 2005 Los Angeles to the space program thirty years prior. Her discoveries may have led her death, and the inquiries of her fiancé Robert force him to confront grave dangers and dark secrets about the past.
Alvarado artfully intertwines into this more contemporary plotline the story of Curt McKillon and his wife Claudia. Their courtship in Fayetteville, West Virginia and the trials and tribulations of their marriage are lovingly detailed as Alvarado shows an assured hand of capturing intense moments that deeply invest the reader. While the narratives of Xochi and Robert’s urgent present and Curt and Claudia’s evocative past are knitted seamlessly, Alvarado punctuates his terse scenes with vignettes that linger in the reader’s consciousness (“With a glance up at the tall ceiling and across the long foyer, Curt felt the impact of his father’s preferred adjective for Claudia’s neighborhood: illusory”). What happened recently to Xochi and what happened to Curt all those years earlier become compelling mysteries that drive the narrative. A book of poems that link the two is fitting for a novel for the comfortably soars with stirring passages even as the clear-eyed vision of what characters confront keeps the work grounded.
The theme of forbidden territory is explored in original ways throughout. Xochi’s genetic research leads her to revelations that have grave consequences; Curt’s initial relationship with Claudia is established on such transgressions, and the intensity of their intimacy makes the later admissions of unexpected passions even more surprising. Alvarado wisely focuses on the coping with these forbidden feelings (“Silence is a journey/on which duty is sustained”) and offering them intriguing manifestations through geography. Whether in the Mohave Desert, the coal mines of West Virginia, the jungles of Gambia, or even the dark side of the Moon, Tujunga plots courses that simultaneously mark the growth of Curt even as they signal a Grecian sense of impending tragedy.
And on this journey, Alvarado carries the reader along with plot points that effortlessly jump across time and a literary style that is sly and suggestive: “John described a peanut sauce fish meal as a local delicacy—an order Curt begrudged making when he noticed the attendant run up the alley they had traveled and return with two fish heads peering out of a rolled up newspaper.”
Essentially, Tujunga tells an American story of a half century (1955-2005) that captures much of the wonder of the possibilities of the space program, one that directly is contradicted by the close-minded sensibilities that rendered the society often woefully repressed. Alvarado’s novel is literature of the highest order. Tujunga is filled with writing, plot turns, and ideas that are risky and provocative. It is an entertaining mystery that fires a reader’s imagination and makes him rethink what he thought he knew. Tujunga receives my highest recommendation.
Cry WaterColors (Book) - 1/23/2010 9:55:24 AM
I like the sound of your book a lot, Carlos and will order it. You might be interested in my own, The Crimson Bed, about Pre-Raphaelite artists. Do you have a website apart from AD? At any rate I'll link your AD prescence to my website if you like and perhaps you might do that for me too? Mine is www.lorettaproctor.co.uk Let me know if you are happy to do this. Best wishes Lorri
Cry WaterColors (Book) - 2/20/2007 12:01:30 AM
It's intriguing and your words kept me wanting to read more, Bravo! I am going to pledge, and buy the book. First, and foremost CONGRATULATION, and I look forward to seeing more of you in the near future, keep writing; this years deems GREATNESS!
many Blessings, Loretta
www.gulfnurse.com
Cry WaterColors (Book) - 2/17/2007 9:04:48 PM
Now I WANNA leer tu libro tambien, parese intersante!
Escribe un poema ; Ay muchos que sienten que es mejor escojer
el tiempo para escribir Libros en vez de estar perdiendo tiempo con
poemas; por eso que me fuy de aqui largo tiempo y despues regrese y aqui ando!
Ok well you will as you see fit!
as the lady has just said; You have intrigued me a little more than usual! Ok be well and see you soon!
Rixh Criso
Cry WaterColors (Book) - 1/10/2007 1:40:46 AM
I must say you have me intrigued..after having read the excerpts I have no choice but to get the book..I am truly looking forward to it..
PS..I'd love to see you write a poem that expresses the depth of love potrayed in your book..will you oblige?
Eternal musings,
Vesna:)
