Tan veloz como el deseo: Una Novela (Spanish Edition)
Mexican author Esquivel is best known for the stupendous success  of her first novel, the charmingly erotic, recipe-filled Como  agua como chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate, Anchor, 2001.  reprint), which was spun into a profitable magic realist  Hollywood film. The author, who started her career as a  screenwriter, seems to love working with various forms of media;  she included a CD of ambient music with her second novel, La ley  del amor (The Law of Desire, Random House Espa?ol, 1997). Her  third novel, an examination of estranged love, is a welcome  improvement over the New Age theme of its not-so-successful  predecessor. Here, Esquivel turns down the otherworldliness a  notch and explores  the old-fashioned poetics of love and communication  one of the  characters tells  his love story with an archaic telegraph hooked up to a  computer. While Chocolate's story is about a daughter's  relationship with her mother, Tan veloz's narrator Lluvia pours  her heart out about her father Jubilo, who has Parkinson's  disease and has lost his ability to speak. Trying to figure out  what went wrong in her parents' marriage, she discovers her  mother had sacrificed her upper-class status in a rush to lose  her virginity by marrying the literally magnetic Jubilo, an  aspiring telegraphist and simple man with Mayan blood who can  sense people's electrical energies. He willfully gives part of  his soul with each tapped message he sends and loves a job that  doesn't produce enough to satisfy his wife's material needs. In  an effort to make some quick money for a desperate friend,  Jubilo wins  a high-stakes poker game with the evil and rich Don Pedro, whose  vengeance thwarts the couple's love. Esquivel's quirky voice  is reminiscent of Judy Blume's blushing-adolescent erotica but  transforms that style into an elegantly adult one. The rich  setting of earthy Mexico as a backdrop for a family's  love-gone-wrong story makes for  a smooth, simple read for devotees of a quality romance.  Recommended for all bookstores and public libraries. Adriana  Lopez, "Criticas"Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.