![]() ![]() ![]() It’s the first time we see her at the international airport, waiting futilely to give him her drawing. Paola’s artistic talent is encouraged by her kindly but strict father, and she wins a drawing contest and a chance to meet Pope John Paul II, who is coming to Quito on a papal visit. As they grow up these relationships become inverted: Claudia enters adolescence preoccupied with clothes, makeup and modeling and at permanent war with their mother, and the sensible Patty ends up as her surrogate mother and best friend. Her arrival in the family is met with smiles by her older sister, Claudia, but with jealousy by middle sister Patty. Instead, Paola’s trajectory is that of a normal girl playing with Barbie dolls, then going to school, meeting boys and rebelling against adult restrictions. The doctors couldn’t believe it and misdiagnosed the baby as a “tropical virus.” It’s a nice intro that promises more magic realism to come. As Paola tells it, she was conceived miraculously in Quito, Ecuador, in 1976, when her mother got pregnant for the third time, despite having had her tubes tied. ![]() ![]() Her shrewd, loving mother is a psychic who reads the future in dominoes (!) for the president of the country her father, Uriel, is a defrocked but still religious Catholic priest. There’s very little drama in the story of Paola’s early life, yet her frank narration holds the attention throughout. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |