Fruit of the Drunken Tree
2018 • 306 pages
Ratings10
Average rating4
15
Ratings10
Average rating4
"When women of color write history, we see the world as we have never seen it before. In Fruit of the Drunken Tree, Ingrid Rojas Contreras honors the lives of girls who witness war. Brava! I was swept up by this story."--SANDRA CISNEROS, author of The House on Mango Street. A mesmerizing debut set against the backdrop of the devastating violence of 1990's Colombia about a sheltered young girl and a teenage maid who strike an unlikely friendship that threatens to undo them both. Seven-year-old Chula and her older sister Cassandra enjoy carefree lives thanks to their gated community in Bogotá, but the threat of kidnappings, car bombs, and assassinations hover just outside the neighborhood walls, where the godlike drug lord Pablo Escobar continues to elude authorities and capture the attention of the nation. When their mother hires Petrona, a live-in-maid from the city's guerrilla-occupied slum, Chula makes it her mission to understand Petrona's mysterious ways. But Petrona's unusual behavior belies more than shyness. She is a young woman crumbling under the burden of providing for her family as the rip tide of first love pulls her in the opposite direction. As both girls' families scramble to maintain stability amidst the rapidly escalating conflict, Petrona and Chula find themselves entangled in a web of secrecy that will force them both to choose between sacrifice and betrayal. Inspired by the author's own life, and told through the alternating perspectives of the willful Chula and the achingly hopeful Petrona, Fruit of the Drunken Tree contrasts two very different, but inextricable coming-of-age stories. In lush prose, Rojas Contreras sheds light on the impossible choices women are often forced to make in the face of violence and the unexpected connections that can blossom out of desperation.
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(Note to self: avoid overuse of locomotive catastrophe similes. Go for something cheerier). There were bunny rabbits! We never got to see or hear about them, other than the fact that they existed, but they existed! Isn't that enough?
But let's be honest, this is not a book about bunny rabbits. This is a bleak, harsh, gripping story of life under barbaric conditions. My handful of childhood friends here on Goodreads may find it disturbingly reminiscent of PR's violence and corruption in the seventies/eighties, except this is markedly worse, but somehow the fact that it's so recognizable made it creepier for me. Me dieron escalofríos. I feel fortunate and humble. There but for etc etc.
Beautiful evocative prose. Stylistically, it's a gimmick that rarely works: writing an adult story from the perspective of a young child. Double, in this case: alternating first-person from a seven-year-old and a thirteen-year-old. You know the drill: narrator relates Meaningful Details clinically or curiously, innocently oblivious, but clearly details the author wants us to know so the reader tries to go with it for the sake of the story. And, oddly, I found myself going with it. I can't say that it truly worked, but it was effective: Rojas Contreras managed it better than almost all similar stories I've read. Her protagonists are believable. Both are children of narcissists; both come off as honest, genuine, letting us see how their best intentions – under impossible circumstances – lead to terrible mistakes which cascade.
Most interesting of all is the tone: Rojas Contreras balances hope, acceptance, and despair. Warmth, even. Humans go through bad shit; humans try to make the best of it; humans cope with what they have to; life goes on. I'm grateful for my privilege.
[UPDATE, few hours later: I wrote this paragraph, then cut it because I ran too long, and am now deciding to add it back. Slightly condensed.] I alternated reading this book with listening to the 2023-06-12 episode of Hidden Brain, Between Two Worlds, about the ethical dilemmas faced by those who emigrate away from hopeless environments. Obviously not the same – most people never get that choice – but there were surprising parallels: different weights given to factors that, as a youth, I weighted differently. I still do, but that podcast changed how I interpreted the last third of the book. It was a fortunate coincidence.
Read this book in the context of our work book club.
It was the first time I read about Colombian history and Pablo Escobar, to discover it through the eyes of Chula, a little girl with her limited comprehension of the world was quite something. I was enthralled quite quickly by the story and intrigued by its ebbs and flows. The character was built slowly but became more and more loveable as the story went on. I love the dynamic between the girls, Petrona and their mother, the class division and the differences in ways of seeing the world and Escobar's deeds. At times the writing felt a bit clunky and made me wonder what was happening and it is the main flaw I saw in the book. An interesting read!
