March 1, 2023
Meant to replace driver's licenses and other IDs, the high-tech wristband pitched by a Silicon Valley startup is issued only to those who can prove parental citizenship. As such, second-generation Mexican American Iris Prince (and millions of others) are suddenly "of unverifiable origin." From the author of the PEN/Hemingway Award--winning The Madonnas of Echo Park. Prepub Alert.
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May 15, 2023
This astutely observed if uneven speculative outing from Skyhorse (The Madonnas of Echo Park) follows a second-generation Mexican American woman’s search for belonging. Recently divorced Iris Prince, the daughter of Mexican immigrants who prize hard work above all else, finds a seemingly perfect suburban home for herself and her nine-year-old daughter, Melanie, somewhere in the Southwest. One morning, they notice a wall has appeared in their front yard overnight. No one else seems to notice, despite its changing size and appearance, except for the ghost of a childhood friend who was killed in a mass shooting at a McDonald’s. Iris covets a new bracelet that is used for shopping and identification, but is ineligible because her parents were born in Mexico. When the devices become mandatory for drivers and in the workplace, her desperation pushes her to take unimaginable steps. Though the denouement is a bit implausible, Skyhorse is often witty in his portrayal of modern American excess and surveillance. A scene in a high-end grocery store echoes Don DeLillo’s White Noise, as Iris revels in the “hypnotizing experience” of promise offered by the expensive goods. Despite an overwrought plot, this satire has plenty of bite. Agent: Susan Golomb, Writers House.
June 15, 2023
A Latine mom struggles to maintain her perch in a society determined to undermine her. The title of Skyhorse's second novel is a lie: The real name of the narrator, the daughter of Mexican immigrants, is In�s. But ever since a schoolteacher struggled to pronounce that correctly, she's been Iris, which is just one in a series of microaggressions she's spent a lifetime shrugging off. She's led a life that in the early chapters appears to have the makings of a standard-issue novel of American family dysfunction: She's middle-class, newly separated, and raising a 9-year-old daughter, Mel, in a new home in suburbia. But curious signs around town start promoting a "band" that people are asked to wear on their wrists; one day a stone wall appears in her front yard, which only she and Mel can see. From there, Skyhorse spins an extended allegory not just around just how much White America is eager to disenfranchise immigrants--the bands are ID badges available only to people with at least one U.S.-born parent; the wall speaks for itself--but how immigrants often live in denial about the contempt they face. Skyhorse can be didactic on these points: Iris' sister, Serena, appears in the story mainly to deliver tough-love lectures about her cultural blindness ("I didn't major in whiteness in college como t�"). But the eeriness of the mysterious wall and ever intensifying groupthink vibe give the book an unnerving Stepford Wives quality, and Skyhorse's satirical eye is sharp, from unctuous service workers ("Have a mindful day!") to the cruelty of law enforcement officers' just-following-orders ethos. Skyhorse doesn't quite untangle the mysteries he sets up, but he cultivates an engrossing Kafkaesque atmosphere across the novel. A well-imagined allegory of divisive racial politics.
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July 1, 2023
Second-generation Mexican American Iris (In�s) Prince wants nothing but to have an average life with her preteen daughter in suburban America. All her life she has had to "console my white friends that racism doesn't exist (which of course it does), and console my Mexican friends racism was the reason they didn't get that job (which of course it wasn't). Living in the middle made me insane sometimes," she says. But in the dystopian America PEN/Hemingway Award-winning Skyhorse imagines, there is no peace for Iris. A new law calls for citizens to wear an identifying wristband to receive all services, and Iris does not meet the stringent requirements for one. Worse, a wall slowly grows outside her newly purchased home, a structure only she and her daughter can see. Skyhorse spends a little too much time with his protagonist's navel-gazing, but the story gathers velocity as Iris slowly runs out of options and the taut ending takes no prisoners. The horror here is that Iris' experiences are so recognizable and plausible.
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