The Virgin’s Guide to Mexico
by Eric B. Martin
MacAdam/Cage, 350 pp., $25
Often a novel’s first line gives readers a good sense of what’s in store. But when it comes to the third novel by former Austinite and Michener fellow Eric B. Martin, I’m going to suggest jumping to Chapter 2: “One of the many things she loathes about herself is that she studied French.” The “she” in this case is Alma Price, a runaway from Austin’s tony West Lake Hills neighborhood, who attempts to escape her unhappy family life by fleeing to Mexico. To the book’s detriment, the author wears his influences on his sleeve without irony. Before we outrun the first chapter, Martin name-checks “Beats, Plath, Huxley, Exley” and makes plain his debt to the king of coming-of-age J.D. Salinger and his inestimable Catcher in the Rye.Fortunately, Martin finds his footing about the same time his young heroine finds hers. As Alma hurtles toward her fate in Mexico City, we are treated to some fine passages. “The Courtyard buzzes bilingually, men gulping little Coronitas as they gang grill meat on an enormous smoker with the top off,” he writes. “She slips into the smoke and the cousins, cousins and the husbands of cousins swapping views on ribs, tornados, Rafael Palmeiro, the outlets of San Marcos, hand dug drug tunnels in Nogales. This could be Mexico.” Soon Alma – now disguised as a young man – finds herself pursued by her parents. Martin deftly handles the shifting viewpoints and can be commended for telling much of his tricky tale from a female point of view; besides Alma, the story tracks her mother, Hermalinda, or Lindy, a sorrowful Mexican-born immigrant who has shed her past.
In the end, The Virgin’s Guide to Mexico suffers for Martin’s stylistic stumbles, such as the inclusion of lyrics in this stream-of-consciousness narrative that seem more like clues from a cinema soundtrack rather than anything germane to the story. This is too bad, because just as readers will find themselves rooting for Alma, this critic found himself rooting for her gifted creator, one still struggling to articulate best what he has to say.
This article appears in June 22 • 2007.