The Faraway World

October 17, 2022
Colombians and Colombian Americans experience the bittersweet vagaries of class, lies, and love in this engrossing collection from Engel (Infinite Country). In the suspenseful “Aida,” Aida’s 16-year-old twin sister, Salma, disappears from their quiet N.Y.C. suburb, which the detective on the case describes reassuringly as the opposite of “some third world country.” In the gritty “Fausto,” a security guard entices his naive lover, Paz, into being a drug mule. The enthralling “The Book of Saints” alternates perspectives to tell the story of a loveless marriage between a Colombian woman and a man from Manhattan who meets her online and who pays for her breast implants. In “Campoamor,” set in Cuba, a bleak romantic triangle complicates the narrator’s effort to leave the country. In “Libelula,” a Colombian immigrant takes a cleaning job with a wealthy Colombian family and moves into a studio share in Manhattan with another Colombian woman who works as a nanny; by the end, the story blooms into a seductive portrayal of infidelity. Engel’s alluring story lines and empathy for her characters make this a winner.

December 1, 2022

Engel follows up her New American Voices Award--winning novel Infinite Country with a strong collection of 10 short stories. The stories primarily focus on the Colombian diaspora in the United States and Cuba and are tied together by events of misfortune and trauma as well as pervasive feelings of isolation and melancholy. A twin on the cusp of adulthood is left behind after her sister goes missing and is forced to grapple with her uncertain future and her parents' failing marriage as they desperately await their child's return. A young woman begins unknowingly and then knowingly helping her boyfriend run drugs for money to begin their lives together. A grieving woman must find a new resting place for her brother after his grave is ransacked. Engel writes with empathy and care, deeply exploring the inner world of her characters, and despite using first-person perspective, she keeps the stories from being melodramatic by having them told in retrospect. The result is a peek into rich, fully realized characters and their lives. VERDICT Engel's character-focused short stories are thought-provoking and intense; readers of literary fiction will enjoy this masterfully written collection.--Jennifer Renken

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Starred review from November 1, 2022
The "faraway" worlds Engel (Infinite Country, 2021) describes in this heart-warming collection of short stories are ones her characters spin to survive. When you're an immigrant in a land that's radically different from your own or when your economic circumstances compel you to imagine escape, an imagined world that can give you succor is exactly what you need. In "Aida," a disappeared girl's twin imagines life after her sister. "Our mother liked to think she raised us to live in a bigger world, but Aida and I only wanted a world together." In "Fausto," on the other hand, the world his girlfriend imagines is forever out of reach as a young man gets involved in drug trafficking to deliver the riches expected of him. Engel is an expert at painting the lives of the marginalized and she excels again as she travels from Colombia to Cuba to the U.S. "Things are changing, Marco says, though to me nothing has changed," says the narrator of "The Bones of Cristobal Colon," about Cuba. Time might be static for some or too fluid for others. Nevertheless it passes by even as we try to build our worlds, brick by brick.

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Starred review from November 15, 2022
In New York, Cuba, and Colombia, destiny comes in pairs. Most of the 10 stories in Engel's fifth book, following the novel Infinite Country (2021), have a pair of characters at the center, the intersection of their lives sizzling like crossed wires. In the first, "Aida," chosen for The Best American Mystery Stories 2014, a 16-year-old girl faces the unfolding reality of her twin sister's disappearance. In "Fausto," an almost O. Henry-style ironic outcome crowns a story about a young woman whose boyfriend lures her into drug muling. Unexpectedly, the closest thing to a happy ending is found in "The Book of Saints," a wonderful tennis match of a story, bouncing back and forth between the points of view of a Home Depot manager from upstate New York and his mail-order Colombian bride. You wouldn't think a relationship that starts out with "To be honest, all the girls on the website looked really similar," and "It didn't bother me to sleep with him" is going to turn out to be a love story. "Campoamor" highlights Engel's dark sense of humor, focusing on a wannabe novelist in Havana with two girlfriends. This man is getting nowhere on his novel but as an "interesting exercise" writes practice suicide notes in his notebook. "Dear Lily, I remember when you saw me on the sidewalk and asked me to help bring your shopping bags to your apartment. Within minutes you were sucking me off as if you'd been waiting for me all your life. You make it hard to leave you." Engel's gift for dialogue makes the stories a pleasure to read despite their often grim situations--the stealing of a brother's bones from his grave, the impregnation of a nanny by the man she works for, the strange sort-of romance that unfolds between the survivors of a kidnapping and a rape. Engel's multinational update of dirty realism is full of ironic flair, imagination, and empathy.

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