The Meaning of Consuelo

August 11, 2003
A starred or boxed review indicates a book of outstanding quality. A review with a blue-tinted title indicates a book of unusual commercial interest that hasn't received a starred or boxed review. THE MEANING OF CONSUELO Judith Ortiz Cofer. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $22 (224p) ISBN 0-374-20509-4 Puerto Rican novelist, essayist and poet Cofer (The Latin Deli, etc.) chronicles the childhood and young adulthood of Consuelo, a bookish girl growing up in a San Juan suburb in the 1950s. Cofer's novel is richly descriptive of the shifting mores of Puerto Rican culture and the historical particularities of the era (especially the growing American presence on the Caribbean island), but its deeper elements—Consuelo's growth into maturity; her sister's developing schizophrenia; and the demise of her parents' marriage—lack originality and are plagued by an overabundance of foreshadowing. Consuelo, her name signifying comfort and consolation, looks out for her younger sister, Mili, whose name derives from the word for miracle. The novel begins on a foreboding note: the local transvestite, María Sereno, interrupts a casual game of catch between the girls. They scamper into the house, scolded by their mother: "We do not associate in public with people like María Sereno." Life grows steadily gloomier for Consuelo: she botches her one high school romance; her beloved gay cousin, Patricio, moves to Nueva York; Mili starts acting strangely, singing to herself and speaking in tongues; and her father has an affair with a lounge singer at the hotel where he works. Cofer relies heavily on signposting, with lines like "It would be a while before we came to understand the true meaning of the word tragedia," which slow the narrative. Precise, near-sociological glimpses of island life in the 1950s—the introduction of mahones, or jeans; GI loans and new housing developments; the reassuring taste of sugar cane—add substance, but this is a plodding, overly deliberate effort. Agent, Liz Darhansoff.