Lost in the City.

• Author: Mujica, Barbara

Lost in the City, by Ignacio Solares. Trans., Carolyn and John Brushwood. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998.

Lost in the City contains two novellas on a single theme: the crushing, numbing, dehumanizing effects of the urban environment. In the fiction of Ignacio Solares, one of Mexico's most highly regarded younger writers, Mexico City takes on mythic proportions. The metropolis is a seductive, destructive monster that promises freedom and new horizons, but too often delivers misery.

Latin America has produced relatively little fiction focusing on children and adolescents, but Solares's protagonists are both youngsters. By showing us the city through their inexperienced eyes, the author leaves the door open for multiple interpretations of his novellas. Both Cristina, the ten-year-old protagonist of "Tree of Desire," and "Serafin," pre-adolescent protagonist of the work that bears his name, experience the metropolis in a state of awe and confusion. Furthermore, at times the narrative is invaded by a jumble of voices that blur the reader's sense of objectivity. The resulting dreamlike--or nightmarish--quality of the text raises numerous questions with regard to what really happens in these stories, and our inability to answer those questions with certitude produces a sense of terror.

In "Tree of Desire," Cristina, an upper middle-class child from an apparently normal family, runs away with her four-year-old brother Joaquin, and their cat, Lucas. Their first stop is the apartment of Cristina's friend, Alicia, who promised to give them some money. As Alicia's parents ask probing questions, promising repeatedly not to call the runaways' parents, yet clearly intending to do so, it becomes clear that they are part of the hostile, threatening adult world from which Cristina and her brother are fleeing.

Subtle clues reveal that something is dreadfully askew in Cristina's family. Fragments of the adults' arguments fill her mind. The sight of a policeman--a male authority figure--distresses her terribly. The girl is clearly...