How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water

As you can tell from my first two choices, I usually go for dark, disturbing fiction.

I love fiction that confronts me with the challenge of making sense of troubling circumstances and putting myself in another’s place, work that’s as complex and difficult as the world we live in. So maybe this novel qualifies in those terms because narrator Cara Romero surely has a lot of problems.

Faced now with unemployment and a job counselor, she has no idea how bureaucracy works and all she can do is answer standardized questions in her own digressive way. Cara’s 100% authentic voice… show more.

Cara Romero’s unique and vibrant voice stayed with me long after I finished the book. Like all immigrants, she’s caught between two worlds. She’s bound to the parents she left behind in her native Dominican Republic, and she cares for her family and friends in Washington Heights, New York. She’s a flawed character who grows during the story because, as she explains, she doesn’t want to hurt anyone. As a parent, I felt for Cara and her estranged son Fernando, separated by vast cultural differences. This is a heartwarming story, where Cara’s compassionate voice is juxtaposed with the bureaucratic lingo… show more.