num_pages: 404
description: In Ana Veciana-Suarez's debut novel, three generations of Cuban-American women struggle to care for an ailing, premature baby boy. An extra chromosome has thrown Victor Eduardo's whole body out of whack. He has tiny holes in his heart and keeps getting pneumonia. His mother, Maribel, falls apart, his grandmother plays the lottery, and his great-grandmother talks to ghosts. Victor Eduardo's birth brings Cuca, Adela, and Maribel to understand one another better than ever, even though they have lived together in the same Miami duplex for Maribel's entire life. Have a hankie ready, because this is a very sad story.  At 77 years of age, Cuca has a vibrant spiritual life--she regularly converses with her deceased husband, brother, and grandmother, asking them for advice on helping Victor and consoling Maribel. Cuca's daughter Adela is something of a wild woman, a sexy, middle-aged beautician who distracts herself from the baby's woes by playing the lottery and having an affair with her best friend's husband. Until Victor's birth, Maribel thought she was completely different from her mother. She was a marketing analyst, an orderly, cautious person. Her son's difficulties shatter her beliefs in rules and justice. In the wake of the tragedy, she hardly recognizes herself: "The Maribel who had thought life could be simplified into charts, where had she gone?" It is difficult to write about a sick and dying baby without resorting to clichés or becoming overly sentimental. Ana Veciana-Suarez makes a valiant effort to do so in The Chin Kiss King. --Jill Marquis 
language: Spanish; Castilian
title: El Rey de Los Besos
titlecomplete: El Rey de Los Besos
genres: Fiction
ratings_count: 102
publisher: Planeta Pub Corp