From Publishers Weekly
Castillo's ( Sapogonia ) inventive but not entirely cohesive novel about the fortunes of a contemporary Chicana family in the village of Tome, N.M., reveals its main concerns at once. Sofi's three-year-old daughter dies in a horrifying epileptic fit but is resurrected (and even levitates) at her own funeral, reporting firsthand acquaintance with hell, purgatory and heaven. Magic and divine intervention in varying ways touch each of Sofi's three other daughters: the eldest, mainstreamed yuppie Esperanza; Caridad, whose path leads toward folk mysticism; and the more mundane Fe, who--seized with a screaming convulsion when her fiance jilts her--is brought to silence only months later through the intercession of the resurrected youngest sister, "Loca." Castillo takes a page from the magical realist school of Latin American fiction, but one senses the North American component of this Chicana voice: in her work, occult phenomena are literal, not symbolic; life is traumatic and brutal--as are men--but death is merely tentative. She sounds a secondary note as a proponent of feminism and social justice, but her hand falters when she attempts to blend the formation of an artisans' cooperative or an industrial toxins scandal into a universe of magical healings and manifestations. Castillo is also a critic, a translator and a poet. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
This masterfully written novel by the author of The Mixquiahuala Letters (Anchor: Doubleday, 1992) tells the story of Sofia and her four daughters. The Hispanic family lives in Tome, New Mexico, a small, quiet town whose inhabitants nonetheless directly deal with such current social issues as AIDS, industrial pollution, the volatile political situation in the Middle East, poor people's struggle for self - sufficiency, and the current interest in alternate spirituality and natural medicine. Although filled with tragic events, the narrative also offers hope in its portrayal of successful journeys toward wholeness by each of the five women. Each chapter stands on its own as a complete story, but readers won't be satisfied until they've finished the entire skillfully constructed book. Highly recommended for collections with demand for Hispanic, women's, or spiritual literature.- Sherri Cutler, Children's Memorial Hosp. Lib., ChicagoCopyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
Chicana writer Castillo (whose reputation until now has been mostly regional) brings a warm, sometimes biting but not bitter feminist consciousness to the wondrous, tragic, and engaging lives of a New Mexico mother and her four fated daughters. Poor Sofi! Abandoned by her gambler husband to raise four unusual girls who tend to rise from adversity only to find disaster. ``La Loca,'' dead at age three, comes back to life--but is unable to bear the smell of human beings; Esperanza succeeds as a TV anchorwoman--but is less successful with her exploitative lover and disappears during the Gulf War; promiscuous, barhopping Caridad--mutilated and left for dead--makes a miraculous recovery, but her life on earth will still be cut short by passion; and the seemingly self-controlled Fe is so efficient that ``even when she lost her mind [upon being jilted]...she did it without a second's hesitation.'' Sofi's life-solution is to found an organization M.O.M.A.S. (Mothers of Martyrs and Saints), while Castillo tries to solve the question of minority-writer aesthetics: Should a work of literature provide a mirror for marginalized identity? Should it celebrate and preserve threatened culture? Should it be politically progressive? Should the writer aim for art, social improvement, or simple entertainment? Castillo tries to do it all--and for the most part succeeds. Storytelling skills and humor allow Castillo to integrate essaylike folklore sections (herbal curing, saint carving, cooking)--while political material (community organizing, toxic chemicals, feminism, the Gulf War) is delivered with unabashed directness and usually disarming charm. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Tome is a small, outwardly sleepy hamlet in central New Mexico. In Ana Castillo's hands, though, it stands wondrously revealed as a place of marvels, teeming with life and with all manner of collisions: the past with the present, the real with the supernatural, the comic with the horrific, the Native American with the Hispano with the Anglo, the women with the men. With the talkative, intimate voice and the stylistic and narrative freedom of a Southwestern Cervantes, the author relates the story of two crowded decades in the life of a Chicana family. The mother, Sofia, holds things together in the years following the disappearance of her husband Domingo (he of the Clark Gable mustache and the uncontrollable gambling habit). Then there are the daughters: Esperanza, Chicana campus radical turned career woman and television news reporter; Caridad, a nurse who dulls the pain of being jilted with nightly bouts of alcohol and anonymous sex; Fe, the prim and proper bank employee in constant quest for the good life; and la Loca, whose "death" and subsequent resurrection at age three have left her strange and saintly and attuned to higher spiritual frequencies. Ana Castillo's triumph in So Far from God is to weave the mundane and the miraculous, the modern and the archaic, and the tragic and the humorous into one rich novelistic fabric. Hers is a homegrown magical realism, leavened with sly commentary, controlled anger, and a distinct feminist point of view of the world and the cosmos. Of all the marvels in this book, and there are many, the greatest is the achievement of its creator.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Castillo's ( Sapogonia ) inventive but not entirely cohesive novel about the fortunes of a contemporary Chicana family in the village of Tome, N.M., reveals its main concerns at once. Sofi's three-year-old daughter dies in a horrifying epileptic fit but is resurrected (and even levitates) at her own funeral, reporting firsthand acquaintance with hell, purgatory and heaven. Magic and divine intervention in varying ways touch each of Sofi's three other daughters: the eldest, mainstreamed yuppie Esperanza; Caridad, whose path leads toward folk mysticism; and the more mundane Fe, who--seized with a screaming convulsion when her fiance jilts her--is brought to silence only months later through the intercession of the resurrected youngest sister, ``Loca.'' Castillo takes a page from the magical realist school of Latin American fiction, but one senses the North American component of this Chicana voice: in her work, occult phenomena are literal, not symbolic; life is traumatic and brutal--as are men--but death is merely tentative. She sounds a secondary note as a proponent of feminism and social justice, but her hand falters when she attempts to blend the formation of an artisans' cooperative or an industrial toxins scandal into a universe of magical healings and manifestations. Castillo is also a critic, a translator and a poet. (May)

Library Journal

This masterfully written novel by the author of The Mixquiahuala Letters (Anchor: Doubleday, 1992) tells the story of Sofia and her four daughters. The Hispanic family lives in Tome, New Mexico, a small, quiet town whose inhabitants nonetheless directly deal with such current social issues as AIDS, industrial pollution, the volatile political situation in the Middle East, poor people's struggle for self - sufficiency, and the current interest in alternate spirituality and natural medicine. Although filled with tragic events, the narrative also offers hope in its portrayal of successful journeys toward wholeness by each of the five women. Each chapter stands on its own as a complete story, but readers won't be satisfied until they've finished the entire skillfully constructed book. Highly recommended for collections with demand for Hispanic, women's, or spiritual literature.-- Sherri Cutler, Children's Memorial Hosp. Lib ., Chicago

Barbara Kingsolver - Los Angeles Times Book Review

A delightful novel￯﾿ﾽimpossible to resist.

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