Don’t be deceived by the slender proportions of this novel from the Dominican musician and author Rita Indiana. Tentacle shapeshifts dizzyingly around three time spans and a loosely connected group of characters, and takes on huge themes, including race and gender, the impact of tourism, apocalyptic events and ecological disaster.
Set in the future, the opening section features a maid called Acilde Figueroa, working for an elderly voodoo priestess with links to the tyrannical president. Acilde is saving up for Rainbow Brite, a one-injection gender reassignment operation; boyish and slender, she has been masquerading as an underage rent boy, until Eric, one of her tricks, comes up with a plan to fast-track her masculinity project. The seas around the island are a lifeless soup due to a nuclear catastrophe directly attributable to the president, and Eric has learned through his contact with the spirit world that he must nurture the Chosen One on behalf of the primordial sea-god Olokun. It will be their job to travel back into the past and persuade the president not to commit his act of nuclear folly.
A dry, sardonic tone anchors the pulpy narrative, with its bloody violence, brutish sex and futuristic flourishes
Continue reading...via Science fiction books | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2R4ofAz
0 comments:
Post a Comment