Caramelo: En Espanol

by Sandra Cisneros

book data

1,940 ratings, 3.78 average rating, 267 reviews (more data...)

rating	frequency	%
5		25%
4		36%
3		29%
2		6%
1		1%

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published

October 1st 2002 by Alfred A. Knopf (first published 2002)

details

Hardcover, 496 pages

literary awards

International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award Nominee (2004)

isbn

0375415092 (isbn13: 9780375415098)

description

Caramelo, Sandra Cisneros's first novel since her celebrated The House on Mango Street, weaves a large yet intricate pattern, much like the decorati…more

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Spanish language entries in Caramelo	2	9	Feb 17, 2010 05:19AM

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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 2,796)

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Jun 10, 2007

Liz rated it:

(review of isbn 0679742581)

Through the main storyteller Celaya, Cisneros has created an epic Chicana novel that deals with issues of laguage, class, race, gender, family, and being on the border of two cultures. She also brings into consideration the issue of truth-telling versus story-telling. Are they mutually exclusive? If the story is a lie should it matter? These issues only make the story more thought provoking.

My favorite aspect of the book is that it deals with the formation of the young female identi...more

Like this review? yes (3 people liked it)

1 comment

Oct 05, 2007

Emily rated it:

(review of isbn 0679742581)

bookshelves: novels

Read in June, 2007

This book was definitely worthwhile, but I think Cisneros got a bit overwhelmed with the task of composing an entire novel. She has many, many gorgeous lines strewn about the entire book with wonderful observations and dialogue, cute and gripping stories here and there, but the entire plot and her basic point are rather blurry if not craggy. She seems to be able to create enough momentum for a certain scene, but she doesn't give much reason for what all the scenes have in common. It seems to ...more

Like this review? yes (2 people liked it)

1 comment

Jul 24, 2008

Sonja rated it:

(review of isbn 0679742581)

bookshelves: dissertation

Read in July, 2008

One of my top favorite books of all times. And not because Latina discourse is The Thing right now; I think most people never really get past the first 50 pages (including those academics who should know better) because it's challenging and -- I believe -- helpfully marginalizing to the Anglophone reader. The plot is circuitous, anti-teleological, and thoroughly rasquache in the political sense of the term. This could be the best Chicana novel, defining the new Chicano experience, a perspective ...more

Like this review? yes (5 people liked it)

1 comment

May 10, 2007

April rated it:

(review of isbn 0679742581)

Read in May, 2007

Just what you'd expect from Cisneros--vivid language that leaves you with fragments of flavors, colors, sounds, and sensations. You travel to and from Chicago, Mexico, and San Antonio with the characters and you grow to love them along the way. What I didn't like was the ongoing metafictional conversation between the narrator and the grandmother about memory and facts, and how they are altered for the greater truth of the story. Why do authors writing autobiographical novels feel the need to jus...more

Like this review? yes (2 people liked it)

1 comment

May 13, 2008

GinaGwen rated it:

(review of isbn 0679742581)

Read in August, 2008

recommended to GinaGwen by: Mandy Roberts

I really enjoyed this book. It took me a long time to read it because I would get through a chapter (all chapters are very short) and have to reminisce about my own personal experiences. Cisneros brings to the forefront issues that many Latinas face. Annoyance of metiche family members and crazy tales they tell, but also a deep love for family. She sprinkled in Spanish words I hadn’t heard in years, that I grew up with but I just don’t hear in Austin. I did realize I am a "Texican"...more

Like this review? yes (1 person liked it)

1 comment

Jan 31, 2008

Jan rated it:

(review of isbn 0679742581)

Read in February, 2008

Reading this book is like gulping a shot of high octane espresso. The writing is incredibly vivid and full of energy, sometimes it leaves you almost breathless. Caramelo is the story of a large Mexican-American family, covering several generations. Told from the point of view of Lala, the youngest daughter, we travel from Mexico City to Chicago and then to San Antonio, Texas. Along the way, we learn the story of Lala's grandparents, parents, and finally Lala herself. This book bursts with l...more

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Nov 23, 2007

Jezkah rated it:

(review of isbn 0679742581)

bookshelves: fun-reads, latin-lit

Read in October, 2006

If i could give it 10 stars I would. I loved it. Felt like home. Like hot cocoa and a tamal at Cafe Tacuba. I agree with another reviewer here, that the format will make or break it for you. But there is something about that pace, the long and the short, the truth and the better-than-the-truth, that is embedded in not only her writing, but the chicana/mexican culture as well. It doesn't straddle the border--the long road between Chicago and D.F., it is the border. That spot where things come tog...more

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Feb 18, 2009

Ika Diyah rated it:

(review of isbn 0679742581)

bookshelves: literacy

Cerita intinya itu apa??? itu yang selalu membuat motivasiku maju mundur buat baca ini novel, mau baca karena penasaran klimaksnya apa (yg sampe di halaman paling tengah aku belum menemukannya), tapi disisi lain juga bosen banget sama cerita-cerita yang melebar kemana-mana. nah gimana enggak.novel ini menceritakan tentang masa kecil penulis, Sandra Cisneros, waktu dia tinggal di Meksiko, khususnya tentang betapa kompleksnya hidup dalam kemiskinan di tengah keluarga besar yang sangat patriarkis. ...more

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Apr 22, 2009

Misha marked it as to-read (review of isbn 0679742581)

bookshelves: book-club, to-read, unfinished

"Tell me a story, even if it's a lie." Simple words standing alone on an otherwise empty page. I like this beginning.

Pg. 21 -- I just finished the part about the father giving away Lala's Bobby doll while she watches, horrified. How is it that parents never understand the attachment that children form to that one special toy? The one that's battered and broken and torn, but is loved intensely not despite of its flaws, but because of them. Mine was "Ellie," a gray ...more "Tell me a story, even if it's a lie." Simple words standing alone on an otherwise empty page. I like this beginning.

Pg. 21 -- I just finished the part about the father giving away Lala's Bobby doll while she watches, horrified. How is it that parents never understand the attachment that children form to that one special toy? The one that's battered and broken and torn, but is loved intensely not despite of its flaws, but because of them. Mine was "Ellie," a gray corduroy elephant my mother made for my 5th birthday. Ellie had black flannel patches for eyes and on his ears, and a wind up music box in his back. Ellie was my constant companion. I slept with him hugged to my chest at night for years. Ellie was the one toy I carried all the way through childhood, through my teen years, into college -- despite my mother's best efforts to rip him from me.

When I was 13 or so, she wanted to give Ellie to the little boy who lived next door. I refused, so she made him his own Ellie using the same pattern, but a green floral print fabric -- far inferior to the original. But behind my back, she cannibalized Ellie's music box, ripped it from his back, leaving behind a gaping wound I lovingly sewed. There were other rips and tears over the years. I sewed them all.

My mother tried to throw Ellie away a few times, but I always rescued him. She eventually got the hint and stopped trying. My mother never had any respect for the things I held dear. My emotions were disposable things to her.

Ellie traveled with me to Boston when I left home for the first time at age 17 to go off to college. He came back to Ohio with me a year later. It had been years since I'd hugged him to my chest in my sleep, but he remained a fixture in my life -- the one true constant. But as so often happens as children become adults, I ended up losing him through my own neglect. Somehow he ended up in a box as I was moving out of my very first apartment without roommates. I'm sure I intended to bring him with me, but in the frenzy and stress of moving, I threw the box out, thinking it contained only junk. It was later I realized I had lost him. I was tinged with sadness, but eventually Ellie faded into the hazy memories of childhood. I hadn't thought of him for years until reading that passage in Caramelo tonight. And now I'm filled with regret that my loyal companion met such an ignoble end. I can only hope some child came along and found Ellie in that box I so carelessly threw out, rescued him, and showed him as much love as I once did. I hope he lives in some child's home still.(less)

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4 comments

Feb 26, 2010

Miss CC rated it:

(review of isbn 0679742581)

bookshelves: fiction

Read in March, 2010

recommends it for: someone sitting on a beach, bus, or waiting room chair

I really enjoyed the first third of this book, told from the viewpoint of a little girl who has not yet been sent off to school and has only spent time with her extended family. The part of the story told by this young child was beautiful, very poetic, with lovely word choice. Sigh.

The middle of the book is the story of the child's "Awful Grandmother", how the grandmother met and married "the Little Grandfather," and how the two of them conceived a child (the narr...more

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Dec 30, 2009

Dominic rated it:

(review of isbn 0679742581)

Read in January, 2010

Caramelo is a most unusual book. It is part-memoir, part-fiction, part-retelling of The House on Mango Street, and part-dream. Knowing very well what I do of Sandra Cisneros and her generally small body of work, I can never quite tell where the line between Caramelo's main character (Lala Reyes) and Cisneros herself actually is. Several incidents in this novel even mirror Esperanza's tale and those of her poems, muddying even more the line between fact and fiction and more fiction.

...more Caramelo is a most unusual book. It is part-memoir, part-fiction, part-retelling of The House on Mango Street, and part-dream. Knowing very well what I do of Sandra Cisneros and her generally small body of work, I can never quite tell where the line between Caramelo's main character (Lala Reyes) and Cisneros herself actually is. Several incidents in this novel even mirror Esperanza's tale and those of her poems, muddying even more the line between fact and fiction and more fiction.

When I heard Cisneros speak back in 2003, she insisted that Lala was a fictional rendering, but she left me wondering about memory itself and how it works. Aren't we all fictional characters in the novels of our own memories? At the end of Caramelo, she writes, "La Divina Providencia is the most imaginative writer. Plot lines convolute and spiral, lives intertwine, coincidences collide, seemingly random happenings are laced with knots, figure eights, and double loops, designs more intricate than the fringe of a silk rebozo. No, I couldn't make this up. Nobody could make up our lives." God, I love that--don't you? But at the same time, Cisneros proves that we can, in fact, make up/revise/fictionalize our own histories. We can tell, what she calls, "healthy lies" because even in our wildest literary inventions, we find truth.

That said, Caramelo is a challenging novel to get through. There is no driving, single narrative to propel the reader, and as a result I usually end up reading it in chunks and then setting it down because I get sucked into another book. Her bold use of Spanish diction/bilingualism doesn't bother me, but I've heard that this has alienated other Anglo readers. I love the characters, but I feel at a distance from them at certain points in the novel. For example, Lala is at times the main character and at times merely an observer.

Sandra Cisneros, though, is one of my favorite writers. Her prose is so musical, forever rhythmic, and always a surprise. Her way of describing even the most mundane things makes everything seem fresh and remarkable. She has probably had one of the biggest impacts on my own writing style, and for this reason, I will read Caramelo again and again to hear the musicality of the written word and wonder if I could ever create something from the shards of my life so utterly beautiful.(less)

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Jan 19, 2010

Parissa rated it:

(review of other edition)

Read in January, 2010

While I have long been a fan of Cisneros' imagery-laced prose, her less-is-more style that gleefully dances on the line between fact and fantasy is perhaps more suited to short stories than full novels. Indeed, at times CARAMELO feels like a collection of short stories rather than a novel-- it's as if a master photographer has decided to make movies. Although the composition is beautiful, it doesn't feel like a smooth, flowing whole.

And then, as if to compensate for the fact that sh...more

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Aug 03, 2009

Michaela rated it:

(review of isbn 0679742581)

Read in August, 2009

I really love Cisneros' narrative technique in this book -- the interplay of fiction and history (complete with footnotes and backstory about the "real" events/people that pepper the novel), the changing viewpoints (Celaya vs. The Awful Grandmother), the jump in time periods (executed so much more creatively than your average flashback), the repetition of themes and words and phrases in a manner that pushes the story forward ("just enough," the girl who can't keep a secret, e...more

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Apr 25, 2009

Dave Fife rated it:

(review of isbn 0679742581)

bookshelves: read-in-2009

Read in May, 2009

Many reviews have called Caramelo Cisneros' "epic". They might have a point; though it's not the fact that she writes an epic, but the way in which she constructs it that truly fascinates. Her tale spans two centuries, a heady mix of extended family and phantom historical cameos, and a narrative voice that moves and matures, skipping in a seemingly nonsensical order from anecdote to vignette. In the end, it's not Cisneros' characters with their vague and troubling relationship to a sto...more

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Sep 28, 2009

Michelle rated it:

(review of isbn 0679742581)

Read in October, 2009

I really fell in love with this book at the beginning. I don't know how to explain it exactly, but it just felt so "Mexican" and there was a lot that I felt I could relate to. There were moments that I wondered if Sandra Cisneros had heard about my family and was ripping off some of our stories/characteristics... I did feel the last hundred pages lost some of the steam from first 300, maybe writing a book of this magnitude was too much for her. But overall, I really enjoyed it, it ...more

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Oct 01, 2009

Sally Wessely rated it:

(review of isbn 0679742581)

Read in July, 2004

This book is one of my all time favorites; in fact, I think I need to read it again. I read this the summer that I went to Oaxaca not even knowing that I would be able to relate to what I was reading even better because of where I was. I traveled to Oaxaca with a group of Spanish and ESL teachers as part of a college course entitled, "Oaxaca, A Mexican Cultural Experience." Interestingly, there were five or six of us in the group who were either reading or had just read the book. T...more

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Oct 18, 2008

Connect-ion Found rated it:

(review of isbn 0679742581)

Read in June, 2003

recommends it for: Chicagoans, Lovers of Fiction, Anyone learning Spanish, Pilsenites etc.

Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros turns six this year but reads like a classic that has been written through the lives of Chicanos across several lifetimes. The first time I read this book I didn’t enjoy it as much as the professors and fellow bookworms said I would. At first read one may think that Sandra’s skills aren’t special, or particularly creative. Her references to Chicana culture came off as dull and arbitrary and as a common one-dimensional portrayal of our families. Six years later...more

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Jul 31, 2008

Mark rated it:

(review of isbn 0679435549)

Read in September, 2004

This 440-page book reads like a extended short story. On top of that, it reads like a historical extended short story. Caramelo takes you through several generations of a Mexican family whose story shifts from Chicago to Mexico City to San Antonio and back to Mexico City and Chicago, with pit stops all over America and Mexico. Caramelo also uses annotations throughout the book to explain Mexican-American culture or offer mini-biographies of famous people who serendipitously end up in the family ...more This 440-page book reads like a extended short story. On top of that, it reads like a historical extended short story. Caramelo takes you through several generations of a Mexican family whose story shifts from Chicago to Mexico City to San Antonio and back to Mexico City and Chicago, with pit stops all over America and Mexico. Caramelo also uses annotations throughout the book to explain Mexican-American culture or offer mini-biographies of famous people who serendipitously end up in the family history.

More than any novel I've read in 2004, this book did not appear to be in any rush to get where it was going. It didn't seem to include any major plot points or work up to a major climax. I don't mean for that to be as critical as it sounds. It was simply the (pretty much true) history of a family. I think it was the breeziness and poetry in Cisneros' writing that gave the book the short story feel. But it was not a slight book. When I finished it and looked back on the story I realized that there were many major plot points in it, it's just that Cisneros didn't hit me over the head with them.

With Caramelo, you know that family history is actually family storytelling, and there's no problem telling a "healthy lie" (as the narrator's father puts it) if it helps the story. These myths somehow help centuries of stories weave together seamlessly. Ironically, the only time the novel feels disjointed is when the story centers on the narrator, as she goes through puberty. But that is a short diversion and a minor objection.

So, how did I like the book? While I was reading it, I actually wasn't sure. It took me a relatively long time to get through the book. I think that was caused by the book's laid-back feel and its lack of the strong backbone of a gripping tale. I ended up reading a few pages at a time, with very little pushing me to want to read on and on. But after finishing the book I found that I did enjoy "cheating" and reading a short story, no matter how long it was, as a break from reading novels. The historic bits about Mexican-American history from the Mexican viewpoint were very interesting and the storytelling is on a personal scale and often very funny. But for this family's story to be considered a novel I think it would have to be more concrete. More propelled. Like many of the short stories I've read in anthologies like Best American Short Stories, this was a very interesting little story that I enjoyed while I was reading it, but after moving on becomes part of the collective "short stories" that I may not remember but makes me a fan of short stories.(less)

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Apr 12, 2008

Hazel rated it:

(review of isbn 0679742581)

Read in May, 2008

A beautifully written epic history of the family Reyes over three generations. Narrated largely through Celaya's perspective, the youngest daughter of the Reyes clan, the reader learns about Grandmother Soledad's childhood and adolescence; grandfather Narciso and his upbringing both in Mexico and the U.S.; and father Innocencio, his childhood, and how he and Celaya's mother meet. Throughout this family history, Cisneros throws in a lot about American/Mexican history and the socio-political env...more

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Dec 27, 2007

Amy rated it:

(review of isbn 0679742581)

Read in January, 2008

Caramelo, a cross between a collection of vignettes and an integrated novel that is a bildungsroman and family history for a young Mexican girl growing up during the Vietnam era, was an unexpected pleasure: for some reason, I was anticipating something cute or ultra self-consciously oppressed, something that wore its ethnicity on its sleeve without delving deeper than the quaintness of its customs or its geography, but this novel was not that. It was deeply honest, deeply involved, and its ...more

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