The ZigZag Way by Anita Desai - first published in the UK in 2004
Eric
accompanies his student girlfriend on her field trip to Mexico but goes off
exploring on his own. He travels to
the mining area where his paternal grandfather, a Cornish tin miner, once
worked and where his own father was born.
Initially he stays at a hacienda belonging to the mysterious and
unfriendly Dona Vera, an Austrian with a dubious past in wartime Europe. He visits the place where his grandparents
lived on the day of La Noche de los Muertos (Festival of the Dead). The story of his grandparents lives in
Mexico and his grandmother’s death in childbirth as they fled from the Mexican
Revolution is also told. At the end of
the book Eric has an unexpected and strange meeting with someone, which ties
the various strands of the story together.
I enjoyed learning about the history of the Cornish miners in Mexico,
which was something I was hitherto unaware of.
Both the hardback and paperback copies of the book have quite scary
covers with skeletons or skulls on, which I think give the wrong impression of
the content of the book. 6/10
15th June 2012
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