Loteria — Ruben Mendoza

Not simply a collection of disparate stories, Rubn Mendoza's Lotera breaks new ground exploring literary territory somewhere between the novel and story forms. The book has been described as a mosaic of inter-related pieces which, while certainly able to stand alone quite well, make their greatest impact when taken as a whole in the over-arching structure of the book. Character relationships and histories weave in and out of different pieces, making up a larger narrative built on the cobbled bits and pieces of lives, while the same insistent emotional undercurrent runs throughout, creating a different kind of narrativeone less dependent on traditional plot linearity and more intent on developing an emotionally and thematically integrated whole. The author's world (and the world of Lotera) is one in which straight linear narrative no longer makes sense, and where the need for emotional connections is therefore perhaps more important than ever before.