How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water

July 4, 2022
Cruz (Dominicana) returns with a wry story of the Latinx community in New York City’s gentrifying Washington Heights in the late 2000s. Cara Romero, a single woman in her 50s, is unexpectedly jobless after the factory where she worked shuts down. The state’s Senior Workforce Program provides her with meager benefits in exchange for attending weekly meetings with a job counselor. During the sessions, Cara’s monologues range widely, addressing her history of abuse, heartache, and affairs. She knows she has a tendency to get off topic (“When someone asks me about mangoes I talk about yuca,” Cara tells the counselor). Cruz intersperses the sessions with Cara’s questionnaires, job skill tests, and eviction notices, all underscoring the unjustness and absurdity of the economic shifts that have upended the lives of Cara and her neighbors. Cruz expertly avoids idealizing her indomitable protagonist into a flat victim, although not much of a plot emerges from the monologues—sometimes Cara just prattles on. However, readers who persist through the occasional narrative snag will be rewarded with a tender and quintessentially American portrait. Agent: Dara Hyde, Hill Nadell Literary.

Starred review from March 1, 2023

Cara Romero is enrolled in the Senior Workforce Program, which aims to improve the career opportunities of older unemployed people by helping them with communication skills, interviewing practice, and pre-vocational training so that they can reenter the workforce. A proud Dominican woman living in Manhattan's Washington Heights, she lost her factory job during the recession but makes it clear she is ready to return to work. Cruz's (Dominicana) latest documents Cara's 12 captivating sessions with her job counselor. Through one-sided first-person narration, listeners will be drawn into Cara's story as they learn about her upbringing, her family, and her neighbors. Narrator Rossmery Almonte provides a distinctive voice for this compelling character--at times hysterically funny, and always tough as nails. The utterly convincing narration superbly carries listeners through Cara's ups and downs. Narrator Kimberly M. Wetherell provides a counterbalance to Almonte's rich narration, reading through paperwork filed throughout the program. Together, Almonte and Wetherell are the key to this exceptional novel. VERDICT A brilliantly narrated immigrant story, spiked with heart and flair, that will have patrons rooting for Cara's success. Highly recommended for all public libraries.--Christa Van Herreweghe

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 13, 2024
Horn (Terms of Service) expands on her podcast of the same name in this lucid demystification of foot fetishes, BDSM, orgies, and other sexual kinks. Drawing on neuroscience, psychology, and her background as a dominatrix, Horn covers such practical matters as the best type of lubricant for anal fisting; what various hormones and neurotransmitters are up to during pain play; and how BDSM offers “a practical way to navigate power and pleasure in our reality as it exists right now.” Turning to sexual ethics, she argues that actor Armie Hammer’s text messages articulating cannibalistic fantasies were problematic not due to the fetishes themselves but the “presumptuous and coercive way” he broached them, which was compounded by his “enormous social power and privilege in comparison to his partners.” Readers will appreciate Horn’s graceful synthesis of cultural analysis and scientific fact, as well as her ability to broach taboo topics in nonjudgmental terms—sexual taste, she writes, is “no different from a preference for spicy or sweet food.” Curious readers will glean plenty.