What We Know and Don't Know about Others

This week I've been reading Migrant Souls, by Arturo Islas, a Mexican-American writer and poet who died in 1991.  Here is a web article that tells about the writer as well as his novels: Islas. After reading about the book, I now know that it is a prequel to his first successful novel, The Rain God.  Both books are concerned with the lives of a family living in a small town on the Texas-Mexico border.  The people in the story struggle with each other and with their conception of what it means to be American.

I've been enjoying reading it; its pace is leisurely on one hand but quick on the other.  The narrator jumps whole decades from time to time, then settles into detailed scenes that reveal character and the problems the members of the family struggle with. The effect is to make me care about what happens to the people.  Many issues are dealt with--religious doctrine, homosexuality, divorce, women's place in society, "proper" behavior, inter-racial and -cultural marriage--through the actions and thoughts of the characters.

The narration is from the perspective of one or two characters in the story, but despite getting a lot of information about the people in this story, I have many questions that are unanswered about what happens to them. For instance, early in the book we learn that the main character, Josie, is getting married to an Anglo soldier.  Then ten years later, she comes home divorced, but with very little explanation (to us) about how it happened.  The fact that we are not told does not mean that the family are not told. I wonder if the author's intention is to keep readers in the semi-dark about the characters' lives to keep us in suspense. 

But another thought occurs to me: perhaps the characters are keeping the information from themselves and we are only seeing things they allow themselves to see.  There is quite a bit of discussion in this novel about not discussing uncomfortable truths; maybe the writer is making us experience this first hand by having us puzzle through the gaps in the narrative.

I'll have to think some more about this theory and get back to you. Meanwhile, I plan on putting The Rain God on my list to read at a future time; I want to see what happens to these people.