booksnaturemagic's review against another edition
5.0
What a beautiful and heart wrenching book. Sylvester’s writing pulls you in to her story; the challenges and hopes and tragedies the characters experience are immediate and so very real. The complexities of life at the border - both literal and figurative - are deftly told through her characters. I’m really at a loss for words because this book just blew me away. I’m so glad I read it.
ecruikshank's review against another edition
4.0
3.5 stars rounded up, but I really wish I had that half-star option.
Pros: Sylvester’s writing flows so naturally. Very simple style for the most part, but it can pack a punch. Several of her characters, especially her women, had a lot of depth; they felt fully realized and multidimensional, and they had complex relationships that evolved over time. I became very invested in the family, particularly Isabel and Elda. I enjoyed watching the plot unfold, in parallel across two timelines, and trying to connect the dots as new information was revealed. This sounds like a tiny detail, but I thought it was a great choice to structure the book around very short chapters—it kept me engaged in both of the parallel plots. I really appreciated the way the author dealt with and alluded to issues of immigration as they evolved over time. One line that particularly stuck with me followed a meeting with an immigration lawyer, who talked Isabel through some of the technicalities of the immigration system: “She wanted to ask if quantifiable suffering was the only kind that counts.” Such a brief but perfect encapsulation of so much of our immigration system—figuring out how to fit one’s trauma or one’s history into one of the boxes we’ve decided counts (and also maybe a description of the kinds of immigration stories that get mainstream attention…).
Cons: I struggled with the Omar scenes. I enjoyed the dynamic between him and Isabel, but I just found his opaqueness under the circumstances to be totally unrealistic. He has such an attenuated connection to the world of the living and appears for just a few hours every year—it didn’t make sense that he would be so elliptical when his time (and everyone else’s) is so precious and so potentially limited. (Yes, I found the scenes with the ghost unrealistic because I didn’t buy the ghost character’s motivations and decisions.) I also wasn’t sure I understood Isabel and Martin as a couple. There were some sweet moments between them, but we saw very little of their connection. I didn't get the strongest sense of place from the book, though that may be because I read it on my Kindle and I always feel a little removed from ebooks; I think I read books on Kindle too fast sometimes. And the pacing of the book felt off to me. A little too much time crawling through the interpersonal dynamics in the first half, a lot of important events happening offstage in the latter half, a lot of attention to quotidian details that didn't seem to add much while rushing through some much more significant moments.
Pros: Sylvester’s writing flows so naturally. Very simple style for the most part, but it can pack a punch. Several of her characters, especially her women, had a lot of depth; they felt fully realized and multidimensional, and they had complex relationships that evolved over time. I became very invested in the family, particularly Isabel and Elda. I enjoyed watching the plot unfold, in parallel across two timelines, and trying to connect the dots as new information was revealed. This sounds like a tiny detail, but I thought it was a great choice to structure the book around very short chapters—it kept me engaged in both of the parallel plots. I really appreciated the way the author dealt with and alluded to issues of immigration as they evolved over time. One line that particularly stuck with me followed a meeting with an immigration lawyer, who talked Isabel through some of the technicalities of the immigration system: “She wanted to ask if quantifiable suffering was the only kind that counts.” Such a brief but perfect encapsulation of so much of our immigration system—figuring out how to fit one’s trauma or one’s history into one of the boxes we’ve decided counts (and also maybe a description of the kinds of immigration stories that get mainstream attention…).
Cons: I struggled with the Omar scenes. I enjoyed the dynamic between him and Isabel, but I just found his opaqueness under the circumstances to be totally unrealistic. He has such an attenuated connection to the world of the living and appears for just a few hours every year—it didn’t make sense that he would be so elliptical when his time (and everyone else’s) is so precious and so potentially limited. (Yes, I found the scenes with the ghost unrealistic because I didn’t buy the ghost character’s motivations and decisions.) I also wasn’t sure I understood Isabel and Martin as a couple. There were some sweet moments between them, but we saw very little of their connection.
Spoiler
Everything with Tomás felt a little too convenient, including that Omar kept coming across him at pivotal moments, and his story arc felt a little predictable—I don't normally think to guess where a book is going, but I more or less anticipated this one.Spoiler
I didn't think the Marisol storyline added all that much; I kind of wanted her to be a bigger piece of the story and have more to do or for her separate scenes to be excised altogether. I assumed that somehow she and Josselyn would connect more to the family story at the end—maybe Josselyn's new job would have some specific relationship to the Bravos.zoes_human's review against another edition
4.0
Everyone Knows You Go Home was beautifully written and moving. It is a family saga in the magical realism genre examining the secrets we keep. Along the way, it also looks at the struggles of undocumented immigrants, what they go through to get to the United States, and why they do it.
znvisser's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.0
This was a beautiful story, even though the blurb somehow didn’t really prepare me for what came. I mostly enjoyed the middle part of the book. It took me a while to get into the story because I didn’t pick up on the timelines and characters right away and I mostly didn’t care for Isabel and her attitude towards Claudia in the present day timeline. The middle part really develops though, there are many side issues but they create parallels with the story so it is all connected in a really smart way. It’s also the part of the story where you really get to understand the characters better and what that means for the way they form a family. The last few chapters the author felt the need to tightly wrap up all loose issues and though I understand how they contributed to the message, I could’ve done with less explicitly and at least *some* unanswered questions left out there. Nevertheless, happy to have read and reflected on this.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Death of parent, Blood, Sexual assault, and Xenophobia
Moderate: Death, Medical content, Cancer, Murder, Pregnancy, and Racism
Minor: Deportation
imstephtacular's review against another edition
dark
emotional
hopeful
mysterious
sad
tense
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
3.75
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Injury/Injury detail, Pregnancy, Violence, and Medical content
Moderate: Bullying, Alcohol, Deportation, Death, Cancer, Sexual assault, Physical abuse, Murder, Grief, Fatphobia, Emotional abuse, Classism, Abandonment, Sexual violence, Dementia, Body shaming, and Racism
Minor: Terminal illness, Cursing, Torture, Xenophobia, Child death, Death of parent, Vomit, Drug use, and Rape
mela_318's review against another edition
emotional
inspiring
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
5.0