Biographical note: Wena Poon is a Singapore-born American author whose work has appeared in print, on radio and in film. Winner of the 2010 Willesden Herald International Short Story Prize in England, twice longlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. Poon is the author of Alex y Robert, The Proper Care of Foxes, and Lions In Winter. A graduate of Harvard University and Harvard Law School, she lives in San Francisco and Austin.
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EAN13: 9781907773082 ISBN: 9781907773082 Author: Wena Poon Title: Alex y Robert Series: Salt Modern Fiction Product class: BC Language: eng Audience: General/trade BIC subject category: F Publisher: Salt Publishing Pub date: 25-Aug-10 Extent: 320pp Height: 198 mm Width: 129 mm Thickness: 18.5 mm Weight: 480 gms Supplier:Turnaround Publisher Services Supplier:Ingram Book Group Supplier:Inbooks (James Bennett) Availability: NP Price: GBP 8.99 Price: USD 15.95 Rights: World
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description/annotation:A BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime. In 1959, two famous Spanish matadors, who were best friends, died. Alex y Robert is the witty, modern fable of their grandchildren: Alejandra, a young American woman determined to become a matador, and Roberto, a reluctant star Spanish bullfighter whom she recruits to help her. Part travel adventure, part cultural critique, the novel portrays man’s complex relationship with animals and a new generation’s surprising take on an ancient and controversial spectacle.
Main description:“Alejandra, why do you never listen to me? Women have never been accepted in the world of bullfighting. So many have tried.”
“Where I’m from, a closed door is an invitation to knock.”
Alejandra wants nothing more than to be a matador, like her famous Spanish grandfather. But she’s a girl. She’s American. And she’s picked a really bad time. Bullfighting is on the decline in contemporary Spain, thanks to a controversial bullfighting ban and the worst recession in living memory. Undeterred, Alejandra turns to Roberto, a famous matador her age, for help. Alex y Robert is a witty, engaging story of an unlikely transatlantic friendship that challenges assumptions of culture and identity in a changing world.
Table of contents:
ACT ONE
The Act of the Spears
ACT TWO
The Act of the Colorful Darts
ACT THREE
The Act of the Kill
EPILOGUE
Acknowledgments
View excerpt:
Excerpt from book:
"Hi, Rob."
"Alejandra?"
He had called out her name even before he got up and turned around.
"How do you know it's me?" she asked.
"Nobody in this country calls me ‘Rob'. How did you know I was here?"
Alex held up her phone. "Twitter."
Roberto looked startled, excused himself from his table, and walked to the back of the bar with Alex. They stood furtively in a dim corridor outside the restrooms. "I was going to call you when this was over —" he broke off as a corpulent man squeezed between them to use the restroom. "We always have to come to this bar after the bullfight, it's not where I wanted to meet you, there are too many people. What do you mean, anyway, by Twitter? What's Twitter?"
"One of your fans is in this bar and told the whole world he saw you here. Seventeen minutes ago." She held up the phone for him to see.
"Oh, God, one of those things," he said, glancing at the screen. "Well, since you are here, let's go quickly. I'll make an excuse. Come on."
They pushed through the crowd of men wearing dark blazers and suits. The cured hams hanging from the ceiling gently sweated the smell of oily, salty pig — a strange, moist perfume that rose above the bitter, dry smell of cigarette smoke. Hands reached out and gave Roberto congratulatory shoulder pats. They were always old men — they touched the matador, as if trying to feel again the electricity of youth. Roberto greeted them with humility and respect. A few people took pictures of him as he passed, but paid no attention to Alex. Roberto appeared in public with a different young woman every night, so they'd stopped photographing his arm candy years ago.
He signed a few autographs and then they were on the curb.
"Get in the car, quickly."
"Why?"
"The photographers."
"Where are we going? Which hotel are you at?"
"No, no, not the hotel — there are even more photographers there. I know of a good spot to talk."
At the traffic light, he looked at her curiously. "I've never met a Herrera before. You look so American."
Alex stared at him evenly. "I've never met a De la Torre before. You look so Spanish."
If he had a sense of humor, it escaped her. She was curious about him. Over the years, Sofia had spoken so often of the De la Torres that Alex just assumed they were related. It was only recently that Sofia said that they were not, that they were in fact just long-time neighbors. In those days, when living spaces intermingled to a higher degree, people had a different concept of privacy. A neighbor was as good as kin. She asked Roberto if he knew her grandmother.
"Yes, of course. Everyone in San Martin talked about you guys when I was growing up," he said. "My mother still knows your grandmother even though we moved when I was born. You were the ones who went to the United States. Nobody else we knew went. Of course, she had to do it because of the curse."
Roberto's car was new and fast; he drove recklessly. Fortunately the streets were small and winding in the old part of Valencia. One couldn't pick up much speed. She checked her seat belt discreetly and said, "I've heard different variations of the curse. What's your version?"
Roberto shrugged. "Our grandfathers were best friends, born in San Martin practically next door to each other, went to bullfighting school together. In the fifties, San Martin was a poor, crappy small town. People went hungry during those years. The pair of them was so successful that they made the town proud. They actually became rich from bullfighting, which was unheard of. One in a million. Pedro Javier Herrera and Juan Carlos de la Torre. I was so proud, as a kid, seeing their pictures in the bullfighting museum in San Martin."
"I know," said Alex quietly.
They pulled up at a red light. The couple in the next car stared at Roberto, then started waving excitedly.
"Know them?"
"No." The light changed and he stepped on the gas. In the rearview mirror, Alex saw the woman lean out of the window with her cellphone, taking pictures.
Roberto had a careless, soft lisp and an almost monotonous voice. He never sounded like he cared about anything he was saying. "Herrera was the older of the two. He was always looking after De la Torre. De la Torre had a bad manager. He lost a lot of money. After that he trusted no one except Herrera with his career and his family affairs. One day, in 1959, De la Torre got badly injured in a bullfight in Madrid. Herrera was up next. It was his job to go into the ring and kill the murderous bull. But — as the superstition goes — if De la Torre died from his injuries, then it would also end badly for the matador who killed his bull. Sure enough, Grandpa died, and within a few months, your grandfather also died in another bullfight. So in a single season, San Martin lost its best fighters, went down the rankings and has never produced a brilliant bullfighter since."
"Until you came along."
"I'm doing it for my parents. They see themselves as responsible for San Martin and for upholding Grandpa's name."
"That's the reason you're doing it?" She was surprised.
"Yes. Don't you know by now? People who don't leave San Martin, that's all they have — the family name, bullfighting. That's all they know. They're not going to become teachers or politicians or directors of big companies. Their world is so small. You've been to San Martin, haven't you? There's nothing there! Nothing! A fistful of townhouses and plazas squeezed around a cathedral on a hill. Do you know what it's like growing up there? No wonder all they care about is breeding bulls and the annual corrida de toros."
"They? What about you? You don't care?"
Roberto shrugged. "I am who I am because my father failed to become a torero. So the burden has passed on to me. You don't know what it's like to grow up in this kind of family."
"Why do you say that? Aren't the Herreras a bullfighting family too?"
"Yes, but unlike our side, your grandmother decided to put a stop to it. She shocked everyone. She thought she could erase the family obsession with the corrida by doing so, and the curse along with it. She took all of your grandpa's money and invested it well. She didn't want anyone to fight bulls again. Leave while you're winning, she was famous for saying. Well," Roberto pulled up in a driveway, "until you came along."
"I wouldn't have known if she hadn't told me. She started it."
Roberto turned off the engine. "Why did she tell you?"
"When my parents died in the car accident, she thought I should learn something about my culture. She regretted sending my dad away. She wanted to reconnect with me. She thought that I was raised completely American by my adoptive parents so there was no danger that I would be interested in bullfighting. My mom wasn't even Spanish."
"No, Alejandra," he said gently. "She thought there was no danger of you ever becoming a bullfighter because you're a woman."
"You know what the problem is with bullfighting? You kept alive a nineteenth century custom. And you kept the social attitudes of that time along with it. You know what you need, Roberto? A good dusting."
He looked unhappy with her criticism. She got out of the car and looked around. "Where the hell are we?"
But Roberto was polite, after all. She noted with amusement that the instinct to treat her like a guest, to show her around, was strong. "It was supposed to be a public library commissioned by the city of Valencia," he said. "They were renovating an old palace. They ran out of money because of the recession, so it's unfinished. It's quite abandoned. It's peaceful inside. I used to practice here. No photographers." He reached into the trunk of the car and pulled out a duffel bag. "Come on."
The construction site was full of rusty iron rods, bags of cement, heaps of torn down brick. On one end rose a ghostly eighteenth century facade partly covered with graffiti. All the glass panes were broken; many windows were boarded up with criss-crossed wooden beams to support the crumbling structure.
"Beautiful. Eighteenth century? Might be beyond rescue," said Alex, looking round.
"They've torn down too many things already. I'm glad they're saving this one. Look. The roof's gone, but the newspapers said that they were going to leave it open like that, build a glass atrium within the gaping roof and air condition the interior. From the outside it'll look like a ruin, but inside it'll be all modern and cool." Roberto picked his way through the wheelbarrows and orange construction cones. They came to the center of the old palace. Moonlight fell in a single shaft from the broken roof. Pale frescoes still adorned the walls, speaking of an earlier time. Their footsteps stirred up smoky plaster dust.
He set his bag on the ground and pulled out a magenta and yellow cape. He handed it to her. "Go ahead. Show me."
For years she had eagerly anticipated the first moment in Spain when she would show off in front of a profes sional matador. She had always thought it would be at a bullfighting school, or at a novice fight, before the watchful eyes of a crowd. Always, the crowd had jeered or applauded, hooted or stamped in approval. Sometimes fans and flags would rain down, sometimes flowers; other times they would throw stones at her telling her to go home.
So, this was it. In an abandoned construction site, at midnight, in front of a boy barely her age, who now settled back in the shadows, his boot against a low wall, watching her with intense concentration. She hardly knew him. She had seen him in hundreds of clips on the Internet, on the news — but always at a distance, always in his full costume. Now, in a T-shirt and jeans, he seemed whittled down to the teenager that he really was — with long, thin arms and legs, and shoulders that still bore the trace of childhood. But for his height, which everyone said was a distinct advantage when it came to bullfighting, he looked just like a typical Latino neighborhood kid from back home.
Unpublished endorsement: Wena Poon crosses the cultural – and spiritual – divide with wit, pathos and resolute bravura.
Rosalind Porter
Granta
Unpublished endorsement: The exile returns to illuminate an intimate part of Singapore, and does so quite beautifully.
Neel Chowdhury
Time
Unpublished endorsement: In a new century of Google Earth, YouTube and endless connectivity, her characters prove that what moves us and makes us human remains as compellingly simple – and fleeting – as ever.
Alison MacLeod
Author of 'Fifteen Modern Tales of Attraction'
Unpublished endorsement: Perfectly structured and viscerally imagined, Alex y Robert drags bullfighting kicking and screaming into the 21st century, wonderfully evoking the smells and sounds of the ring in cold, pithy prose. An original and fascinating glimpse into other worlds.
Stav Sherez
Author of The Black Monastery and The Devil's Playground
Previous review quote: For ‘The Architects’, winner of the 2010 Willesden Herald Short Story Prize:
Brainy, talented…brazen…a sly child [who] creates miraculous buildings out of thin air.
Richard Peabody
Previous review quote: A genuine gift for storytelling and for examining the human animal at work and at play.
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