Galindo, Sergio

Austin. 1969. University Of Texas Press. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 0292784082. Translated from the Spanish by John & Carolyn Brushwood. Drawings by Luis Eades. 185 pages. hardcover. Cover art by Luis Eades. Texas Pan American Series. keywords: Literature Translated Mexico Latin America. FROM THE PUBLISHER - THE PRECIPICE, an intimate picture of the complexity of life in a contemporary Mexican family, is a novel of anticipation. The reader is involved immediately and joins the characters in their anxiety about what will happen. Although he may sense, in a general way, what the outcome will be, the details become clear only with Galindo's careful development of the story. Events of earlier times play a role in present reality. Memories of revolutionary upheaval and of a moment of socialist indoctrination cast their long shadows over the present, and these echoes are as characteristically Mexican as the aspects of contemporary life, which Galindo reveals. We become aware of attitudes toward foreigners, for example, and of the importance of tourism, of Spanish immigrants in commerce, of the vanishing old aristocracy, of the changing attitudes when class lines are crossed. But all this is background. The novel's plot is based on human emotions as universal as love, resentment, and resignation. Galindo shows how members of a single family behave as they try to reconcile their egos with tile requirements of family living. Each individual can fulfill his personal destiny (at least as it appears to him) by following a certain course of action. Some are denied this fulfillment by inexplicable fate. Others destroy it through a kind of self-punishment. Still others find it is possible to make a satisfactory compromise. Galindo views the search for fulfillment from the standpoint of those who have missed the opportunity and also as it appears to those who are still seeking. He brings his people to life by his genius for selecting just the right detail to make a situation or an emotion absolutely real. inventory #4034 ISBN: 0292784082.