Marvin Menjívar, Autor - Blog

"So this is how it happens, a part of her thought as she rocked and begged. This is what it feels like. You don’t change. There is no special protection when you cross that invisible line from your ordinary life to that parallel world where tragedies happen. It happens just like this. You don’t become someone else. You’re still exactly the same. Everything around you still smells and looks and feels exactly the same." As usual, Lianne Moriarty is able to create a mystery out of the most common of events. That's a good thing unless the resolution is not as shocking as one expected to believe. Probably my expectations were too high. When I read the novel's description in Wikipedia I was intrigued. After the couple is invited by Clementine's old friend Erika to a neighbor's barbecue party, a spiral of intrigue, lust, and betrayal is unleashed.  I found no lust, no betrayal, almost nothing that was promised, maybe intrigue but until the second half of the n...

"The truth is that very few understand the truth about forgiveness. It is not the culprits who need to be forgiven; rather it is the victims, because they are the ones who cause all the trouble. If they were only less weak and careless, and more foresightful, and if they would keep from blundering into difficulties, think of all the sorrow in the world that would be spared" I had never read historical fiction in my life. I must admit I was a bit intimidated by the concept, by its possible complexity. Alias Grace was my first intake at this sub-genre, and it was not a disappointment. It's a glorious analysis of a complex character and mystery that will forever remain unsolved but that has inspired a talented author such as Margaret Atwood to write such a compelling tale of survival. PLOT Simon Jordan, psychologist, shows up at the penitentiary to interview Grace Marks, a maid that was formerly accused of murdering her employer, Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper...

"Men always say that as the defining compliment, don’t they? She’s a cool girl. Being the Cool Girl means I am a hot, brilliant, funny woman who adores football, poker, dirty jokes, and burping, who plays video games, drinks cheap beer, loves threesomes and anal sex, and jams hot dogs and hamburgers into her mouth like she’s hosting the world’s biggest culinary gang bang while somehow maintaining a size 2, because Cool Girls are above all hot. Hot and understanding. Cool Girls never get angry; they only smile in a chagrined, loving manner and let their men do whatever they want. Go ahead, shit on me, I don’t mind, I’m the Cool Girl. Men actually think this girl exists. Maybe they’re fooled because so many women are willing to pretend to be this girl. For a long time Cool Girl offended me. I used to see men – friends, coworkers, strangers – giddy over these awful pretender women, and I’d want to sit these men down and calmly say: You are not dating a woman, you are dating a...

" I am a cutter, you see. Also a snipper, a slicer, a carver, a jabber. I am a very special case. I have a purpose. My skin, you see, screams. It's covered with words - cook, cupcake, kitty, curls - as if a knife-wielding first-grader learned to write on my flesh. I sometimes, but only sometimes, laugh. Getting out of the bath and seeing, out of the corner of my eye, down the side of a leg: babydoll. Pull on a sweater and, in a flash of my wrist: harmful. Why these words? Thousands of hours of therapy have yielded a few ideas from the good doctors. They are often feminine, in a Dick and Jane, pink vs. puppy dog tails sort of way. Or they're flat-out negative. Number of synonyms for anxious carved in my skin: eleven. The one thing I know for sure is that at the time, it was crucial to see these letters on me, and not just see them, but feel them. Burning on my left hip: petticoat.  And near it, my first word, slashed on an anxious summer day at age thirteen: wicked. ...