High Spirits

Starred review from February 21, 2022
In an author’s note, Gomera-Tavarez notes that her debut collection “started as an exploration of machismo with a dash of magic, inspired by the tradition of lo real maravilloso in the Americas.” Housing 11 interconnected short stories “on Dominican Diaspora,” the Dominican American author’s emotionally sophisticated creation follows a narrative throughline via multiple generations and members of the extended Belén family. Shifting readers to different time periods and locales, including the family’s store in a fictional pre-automobile-era Dominican Republic town and a lockdown in a contemporary New Jersey high school, each story utilizes close third-person tellings and serves as a snapshot of the family’s broader history. Full of vivid and poetic imagery (“Each slice of wet newspaper a little bit of the truth, hardening into a fragile shell over time”), settings worthy of drinking in, and thematic material ripe for contemplation about identity, intergenerational memory, and patriarchy and toxic masculinity, Gomera-Tavarez’s soulfully crafted debut is a sensitive, intrinsically feminist work. Includes an author’s note and a family tree hand-drawn by the author. Ages 12–up.