A Handbook to Luck.

• Author: Martinez, Elizabeth Coonrod
• Position: Book review

A Handbook to Luck, by Cristina Garcia. New York: Knopf, 2007.

A highly recognized Cuban-American writer, Cristina Garcia sailed to fame with her outstanding first novel, Dreaming in Cuban, in 1992, In an era when Latina writers were moving into the limelight. Born on the island, she came to the United States as a child and was educated in English in New York. Her two early novels reflect--much like the work of the Dominican-American Julia Alvarez--that experience of belonging to two cultures, criticized by each for not speaking the language correctly. For her third novel, Monkey Hunting (2001), Garcia delved into Cuba's nineteenth- and early twentieth-century history, alternating perspectives from mainland China to Cuba to New York to Vietnam. Her characters reveal the mixed ethnic heritage of Cubans, as well as the disenchantment of the supposed "better" life in the United States.

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In her new novel, Garcia changes gears. No longer portraying a search for Cuban essence or identity, A Handbook to Luck instead explicates life in US society--a nation of diverging ethnicities riding alongside each other, at times merging, at others clashing, and on occasion simply moving into the slow lane. Most of her alternating characters are immigrants; the first narrator is the child of a Cuban refugee. Enrique grows up in Los Angeles and Las Vegas, plans to go to college, but instead falls into a lucrative career managing casinos. With a wife and two small children, he transfers to Los Angeles, where an alternate character--Marta, an immigrant from El Salvador--becomes his children's nanny. Marta originally worked as a seamstress until the owner of the factory, a Korean immigrant, married her. She cannot bear children, so she adopts a Salvadoran baby.

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