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This immensely moving novel confronts divisions of race, gender, and class, fusing together the stories of people who come to recognize one another from former lives they didn't know existed -- or that they tried to forget. Diego, a deaf-mute, is barely surviving on the border in El Paso, Texas. Diego's sister, Helen, who lives with her husband in the posh suburbs of San Francisco, long ago abandoned both her brother and her El Paso roots. Helen's best friend, Lizzie, a nurse in an AIDS ward, begins to uncover her own buried past after a mystical encounter with a patient. With Carry Me Like Water, Benjamin Alire Sáenz unfolds a beautiful story about hope and forgiveness, unexpected reunions, an expanded definition of family, and, ultimately, what happens when the disparate worlds of pain and privilege collide.… (more)
User reviews
Saenz somehow makes all the Magical Dreaming and Flying across borders and up mountains as believable
as the exchange of Magical Gifts on a deathbed.
Lengthy death scenes from AIDS
As well, the book could have been edited by at least a third to avoid the steady repeating
of the many mysteries and secrets as Diego slowly, very, very, slowly, gains confidence and rejects ugly.
While many happy reunions abound, the death of Mundo was not needed.
His contributions to communal life in the new house could have added welcome humor and depth.
Also, because there are so many people, it eventually becomes confusing to keep track of characters with same first letters:
J and J, L and L .