Hipso Likes Books

From Angela at Goodreads:

Digame. Tell me. About your life, about my life, about everything.

In Marisol Murano’s second novel, Valentina Goldman’s Immaculate Confusion, the reader is thrust into a non-linear narrative told from the first-person point-of-view of Valentina, a Venezuelan immigrant, daughter of two psychologists, sister of a workaholic magazine editor in Caracas, wife of Max Goldman and stepmother of Emily Goldman, to whom the narrative is directed.

The story is held together with the unanswered question of what happened to Max Goldman and Valentina’s unfolding account of her childhood in Venezuela and her adulthood in the United States and abroad. Told with the boldness of South American magic realism and the straightforwardness of North American humor, Murano achieves an engaging account of the inescapable journey of the human heart.

South American stories of children being abducted in the mall and uncles playing volleyball with a yellow frog and fathers treating roosters with more respect than their wives are interspersed with North American tales of being the wife of a Frenchman in New Orleans and the quest to be a Jackie O impersonator for the Museum of Modern Art and the realization that one can never escape from one’s self no matter how many times one may change careers, names, or spouses. 

An entertaining story told in English though flavored with phrases in Spanish and French, Valentina’s Immaculate Confusion ultimately isn’t immaculate or confusing but refreshingly messy with all of its truthfulness.

*I received a copy of this book from the publisher for an unbiased review.