Name: Loteria
Rating: 5 (2 reviews)
Author: Mario Alberto Zambrano

About this book

Summary

Book Summary

In Lotería, the spellbinding literary debut by Mario Alberto Zambrano, a young girl tells the story of her family's tragic demise using a deck of cards of the eponymous Latin American game of chance.

With her older sister Estrella in the ICU and her father in jail, eleven-year-old Luz Castillo has been taken into the custody of the state. Alone in her room, she retreats behind a wall of silence, writing in her journal and shuffling through a deck of lotería cards. Each of the cards' colorful images - mermaids, bottles, spiders, death, and stars - sparks a random memory.

Pieced together, these snapshots bring into focus the joy and pain of the young girl's life, and the events that led to her present situation. But just as the story becomes clear, a breathtaking twist changes everything.

Beautiful full-color images of lotería cards are featured throughout this intricate and haunting novel.

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Media Reviews

"Starred Review. An intriguing debut and an elegiac, miniature entry in the literature of Latin American diaspora that will break your heart." - Publishers Weekly

"A contemplative yet discordant collection of stories about where life's scars originate. " - Kirkus Reviews "Despite some forced connections, first novelist Zambrano's modified epistolary narration works well. Ultimately, though, the dysfunctional nature of Luz's family leaves a bad taste in the reader's mouth; these are not people whom one wants to know." - Library Journal

"Loteria, charms on every page, despite heartache, love and loss...The beauty and joy of her voice overcomes the hardships of her life, and by the end we have fallen in love. Bravo to a marvelous debut!" - Andrew Sean Greer, author of The Confessions of Max Tivoli

"Mario Alberto Zambrano's Loteria is a tender, beautifully written story. In every line, Zambrano finds the happy and sad music of childhood. It is an entrancing work." - Lynne Tillman, author of Someday This Will Be Funny

This information about Loteria was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

Reader Reviews

Write your own review

Diane S.

Loteria
First let me tell you what this wonderful little book looks like. It is about 9 x 6 in. and it is hardbound, no book jacket and on the front surrounded by a background of blue, there is a lovely red rose. The pages are thicker, so they do not tear easily. Loteria itself, is a Mexican game that is played somewhat like Bingo but using colorful cards and riddles and different patterns. Each chapter had a page with the picture of the card in beautiful colors. The presentation of this book is fantastic.

Luz is eleven yrs. old when we meet her, she is being held in a type of juvenile home, where they have given her a journal and told her to write her story, since she will not speak about what has happened. She uses the cards to tell things good and bad, that have happened to and in her family. This story is not linear, she goes back and forth depending on what card she pulls. Eventually we learn what happened in her family. This is a frank and honest telling, from a young girls viewpoint about the things that needed to stay in her family. Family does not ever tell on family. The one card representing the bottle is especially poignant. As she says, "We tell our own stories. At the end she is offered a choice and although we now know what happened, there is still one big mystery in which the reader needs to furnish his own answer.

Very realistic, will appeal to readers of Jessamyn Ward and Bonnie Jo Campbell and other cultural writers.

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