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Common Read 2018

Cristina Henríquez

Photo taken by Michael Lionstar and used by his permission

Reviews and Reactions

"The Book of Unknown Americans," by Cristina Henríquez

“...a quiet, unassuming novel that ravels slowly, quickens without warning, spins into high drama and leaves you in thrall to its vivid characters and its author’s sure hand.”

Book review, The Washington Post, June 14 2014, by Marie Arana

 

Here, Love is Never Free

After you’ve experienced Alma and Arturo’s optimism in the face of almost mythical turns of fate, their story will inhabit you for long after you’ve closed the pages.”

Book review, Los Angeles Review of Brooks, July 26, 2014, by Priyanka Kumar

Homesick Strangers Among Us

"'Unknown Americans' is at its most powerful not when it’s giving us a documentary like look at immigrant life in one Delaware (yes, Delaware) town, but when it’s chronicling the lives of its two central characters... It is Maribel and Mayor’s star-crossed love that lends this novel an emotional urgency, and it’s the story of their families that gives us a visceral sense of the magnetic allure of America, and the gaps so many immigrants find here between expectations and reality."

Book review, The New York Times, July 10 2014, by Michiko Kakutani