Peel My Love Like an Onion: A Novel

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xix, 213 pp. "Peel My Love Like an Onion is the breakthrough novel from Ana Castillo, author of the wildly praised So Far from God--a lyrical, steamy, and moving story of a love tr iangle set in the colorful world of flamenco dancing. Carmen "La Coja" ("the cripple") Santos is a flamenco dancer of local renown in Chicago, despite the obstacle of a handicapped leg, the legacy of a childhood attack of polio. From the beginning of her professional career, she has carried on an affair with Agustín, the married director of her troupe--a romance that is going stale from overfamiliar lust and an absence of honesty. But when she begins a passionate liaison with the younger Manolo, Agustín's godson and a dancer of natural genius, an angry rivalry is sparked. Add to that the looming reassertion of her crippling disease and Carmen's vexed relations with her mother, one of the most exasperating parents in recent literature, and you have all the ingredients for a love story à la Ana Castillo--equal parts soap opera, tragicomedy, and rhapsody. Laced with sarcastic asides and dead-on observations, Peel My Love Like an Onion is a universal work imbued with love's power to vex and exalt." Show more