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Ethereal Reader has taken a brief respite, but it is back! It appears only a couple of members read the last book, so it is with great hope that more will participate in this month's selection and subsequent discussion. If you can think of ways to liven us up, please let ER know.

Thanks to Andrea, here are our book choices for April/May:

The Devil in the White City, by Erik Larsen
What Alice Forgot, by Liane Moriarty
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safra Foer
My Name is Mary Sutter, by Robin Oliveira

Please email your vote to kzmclain@comcast.net by Tuesday, April 3.

Another World

The thing I like most about reading is that a good book can take you away to a different place and time. Teresa Mendoza -- the main character of The Queen of the South -- described it really appropriately. She said that you are changed somewhat every time you read a good book.

I read a lot, and I can really become absorbed in a good book. It can take me away; however, generally, the books I read take me to someplace that I can imagine being and with people I can imagine being with. The Queen of the South was altogether different.

This was a world I can’t imagine even existing, though I am certain it does. When you stop to think about it, every character in this book was despicable, caught up in a life that was cold and heartless and full of hate and drugs and remorseless killing. It is from this world, and from this cast of characters, that we had to choose our heroes and our villains.

It was really a very weird experience for me, but I became thoroughly caught up in Teresa’s story. I can’t say I ever became fond of her, but I was absorbed in her life. She was a girl with no family, save the mobsters and narcos with whom she lived. Patty became her sister. Oleg Yasikov became her father.

If I could put her in a different life, I might have liked her. I certainly admired her keen intelligence and the way she made something of herself – more than something, actually (keeping in mind the world in which she made something of herself). And, within her own sordid little world, she had scruples. She didn’t kill Pote Galvez for example, because he had been loyal (in his own weird way) to her boyfriend and hadn’t raped her. In fact, she made him her bodyguard, and he became utterly loyal to her. But imagine being able to have someone killed without even giving it a second thought. I don’t mean having the ability to do it. I mean having a conscience that would allow it.

The ending took me by surprise. At the beginning, I had theorized that Teresa had looked at the list that her boyfriend Guero Davila had told her to give to his godfather. But since it never really came up again (until the end), I sort of forgot about it. What I didn’t forget about, however, was my confusion about the telephone call that begins the entire book. I wondered all along who would have made that phone call. If that phone rang, it meant Guero was dead. But if his enemies killed him, then who would have called her? Voila! The answer became clear when it was revealed that Guero was an agent for the United States.

Keeping in mind that Teresa lived in an evil world, I must say nevertheless that I loved reading about her rich existence. I loved hearing about the clothes she wore and the house in which she lived, and the people with whom she surrounded herself. It’s hard to imagine having that much money.

I found Patty to be a very sad character. She loved Teresa so much that I think she really gave everything to her so that she could be happy. Then Patty herself, because she knew that Teresa would never love her back in the same way, tried to find happiness through cocaine and the fast life. I was very afraid that Teresa was going to have her killed, and I’m glad that didn’t happen, though her demise was sad enough.

Patty and Teresa. Aren’t those funny names for women in this particular world? They sound like 1950s cheerleaders.

I really liked the Russian mobster Yasikov. Again, funny to say that, since he also lived within this sordid world – killing people without a second thought. But he was so kind to Teresa.

When I started the book, I wasn’t sure I was going to like it. The author used a lot of words. But I found his writing caught me hook, line, and sinker into the world of the drug cartels. The first few sentences of the book created perhaps my favorite beginning of any book I have read. It didn’t take long before I was caught up in this book, despite its darkness.

I also thought that the transition back and forth from third person (the story of Teresa) and first person (the journalist’s gathering of facts) would be confusing. However, I found the transitions to be smooth, and provided a way for the journalist to tell the story of Teresa without having witnessed it himself. His interviewees told the story.

I will definitely read something else by Perez-Reverte. Perhaps the book The Club Dumas that I have had on my shelf for years..