Like Son by Felicia Luna Lemus

I'm finally back! After a couple months of forgetting that I love to read, I'm back! All I can do is jump up and down with ecstatic truth. The first book in is Felicia Luna Lemus's second book, Like Son. I scored a copy of this book at the last AWP conference in Atlanta and have been meaning to read it ever since. Why did I wait this long? Wasn't that conference in something like February? First of all, the thing I love best about this is her incredible attention to detail. For instance, near the beginning of the novel, Lemus describes that palm-sized paper-thin red plastic fish you had when you were a kid. Here's the thing. I had completely forgotten about those fortune-telling fish until I got to page 15 of Like Son, but now I'm having ferocious flashbacks and I want a thousand little red fish to tell me everything that's going to happen in my life.

Lemus also has an acute awareness of grief. Unlike how I (and I suspect, most people) suppress grief and bury it under tons of earth and skin, her main character grieves in a way that is palpable and intense. The novel, in fact, is filled with sadness. I'd hunch that it's the emotion that is the driving force beginning to end. There are moments of beauty, of course, and the sections I described to my wife were the ones that screamed classic love story. However, what I connected with most was the melancholy that ran through the pages.

The other aspect worth mentioning, although I'm not sure I can formulate my thoughts well enough to describe it, is the immigrant experience. Part of the main character's connection to the world, his parents, and his past echoes mine. There's something that happens between a first-generation American and his or her family that you can't fully describe; you can only relate. Felicia Luna Lemus captures this incredibly well and even though you sometimes hate to admit that you feel some kind of deep connection to an imaginary character, such is fiction and it's the sole reason why we want more.

My only disappointment was the last page or two. I was so wrapped up in the novel, so consumed, that I expected more from Lemus. All day today, I've thought about whether or not my want is validated. Did i just want more of the novel? Was it that i just wanted to know what happened to Frank and Nathalie? I realized that it was more than that. Lemus's novel is so strong, tight, and substantial. The last chapter loses that. We're built up and then left hanging and the difference (luckily) between this and the Jason Bourne trilogy is that these characters aren't superheroes with an unlimited life span. All in all, her novel is beautiful and of all the things that could go wrong in a fiction adventure, this is pretty minor. The way I see it, if I can get through a book not wanting to put it down, I figure the author's done more than one thing right.

Read the book for all that it is, as well as for the small amount of what it lacks. Disagree with me about the ending. Don't ask me what the ending is though. If you have to, get yourself a red curling little fish and hope it tells you.