Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros

NATIONAL BESTSELLER

Every year the three Reyes sons and their families drive south from Chicago via Route 66 to the home of the Awful Grandmother and the Little Grandfather on Destiny Street in Mexico City. From the back seat of her father's red Chevy station-wagon, our storyteller Lala loves to witness the crossover from endless Texas to flamboyant Mexico, the switch from truck stop donuts to street vendors with corn on the cob, the smell of hot tortillas and the sting of roasting chillies in the throat and eyes. The youngest of many cousins, Lala is also the most curious. Did the Little Grandfather really lose those very ribs in a terrible battle? And why is the Awful Grandmother's special treasure, her caramelo silk shawl, the colour of burnt milk candy, still unfinished ? As Lala grows older she learns the colourful tales and 'healthy lies' behind the official family legends. Cisneros is a great story teller, a tantalizing conjurer of tastes and atmospheres - and the creator of characters who stomp and dance off the page into your heart.

'CARAMELO is one of those books that is hard to put down. ... a richly funny account of family life in postwar America. But it is in writing about Mexico ... that she excels. ... Cisneros conjures a time, place and mood unforgettably' - The Times 

'CARAMELO is enchanting, soulful, sophisticated and skeptical, full of great one-liners ... it is one of those novels that blithely leap across the border between literary and popular fiction' - New York Times Book Review