Reviews with content warning for Confinement - Infinite Country

Reviews tagging 'Confinement'

Infinite Country by Patricia Engel

15 reviews

ireadtoescape_'s review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

A really good book.
The writing was so poetic and absolutely enthralling.
A very short read but does it pack a punch.
Filled with so much pain and anguish.
The separation and devastation of this family trying to find a place to exist in peace together.
Very interesting how Andean tales were also weaved in.

We all know the enemy 👀👀

Check trigger warnings!! There are a lot!!

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siebensommer's review against another edition

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emotional reflective tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

A nation at war with itself, yet people still spoke of it as some kind of paradise.

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bookshelf_al's review

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reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.75

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maggies's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

Oooof, what a punchy, emotional book. Prose written like poetry, tackling really tough topics with so much humanity.

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jennikreads's review against another edition

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emotional reflective fast-paced

4.75

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ashleycmms's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging emotional hopeful tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

Content Warnings

kclark's review

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adventurous challenging emotional informative reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

This book explores the complexity of family relationships strained across time, distance, immigration status, and class. While Talia's journey from the correctional school back to Bogotá is used as the main plot of this book, the actual story of this book centers on her whole family and how they wound up split between two countries. We learn through non-sequentially how her parents met, started a family, and moved to the United States before the family was split up as a result of complex immigration status.

The way in which family saga is relayed is often a scene of Talia on her journey home, and then something triggers a memory of her family which then spins into a brief tangential story about a member of her family and often times will branch off a few more times into different vignettes which may last several chapters. This felt a bit messy while I was reading it, but by the time I reached the end of the novel and I reflected on the book as a whole, it worked for me.

The concept of Justice is central to this plot. Characters ability to react to unjust situations and dole out a version of justice is often restricted by their circumstances. We see how immigration status can disproportionately impact undocumented people and make them unable to access justice. We also see how one's personal justice and society's concept of what is just can often be at odds. Engel also explores how access to power skews the sense of justice.

Overall, I enjoyed this book. There were moments of beautiful prose that really struck me, but overall the book was not one of my favorites. In short, I liked it, but I did not love it.

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caseythereader's review

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adventurous emotional hopeful sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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just_one_more_paige's review

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challenging emotional hopeful reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

This is a #bookstagram made me do it book choice (thanks in main part to @irisbooklist) and that's about all I have to say as an intro.

Infinite Country follows Mauro and Elena who meet in Bogotá, Colombia and decide, after the birth of their first child (Karina), to the United States. Once there, they make the decision to overstay their tourist visa, to continue sending money back to Elena’s mother (Perla) in Colombia, and have two more children (Nando and Talia), When Mauro is deported, Elena makes the impossible chooses to send her youngest back to Colombia, knowing that she can return to the US when she’s older. And we come into the story with Talia, she is now 15 years old, fighting to escape a (maybe/maybe not warranted) stint in a youth correctional facility and travel across the Colombia to get to the airport in time to make her flight to reunite with her mother and siblings.

Holy ever-loving goodness, this book was spectacular. I cannot believe the amount of history and life and [socio-political] commentary that Engel packs into these 200 pages. I have read epic 500+ pages family sagas that I’ve had much less reader-investment in. The authenticity, the vulnerability and the depth in each of these characters was just so special. While the primary “story” revolves around Talia as the axis for the plot – the daughter who exemplifies the love of the country of birth with the hope for the new country and the straddling of both that, once attempted, cannot be undone – we also get short sections of perspective from each of the family members individually, from Perla to Nando, that give profound insight into their different experiences within their realities. These POVs were woven together with such smooth transition and provided SUCH a look at the fault lines of family and home that come with immigration. It also provided a phenomenal building of the story and connections, literarily, throughout…all the way up to the perfectly done ending. What authenticity, what emotion, what a message!

Other things that I loved, included that writing itself. It was a very compelling, short sentences flow, to it that was just right for the story and contributed to the expert crafting and pacing and delivery. Also, a favorite aspect for me here (and really any other book that has this in it) was the integration of Colombian and Muisca folklore stories into the novel, as parallel and enhancement to the present-day story. And the review wouldn’t be complete or honest if I didn’t mention the strength of emotion in the desperate longing for home, while also looking forward to new/more, from all the characters. She is able to communicate the impossibility of the options, the “no right” (and, therefore, “no wrong”), choices that face families, and the unbearable pull from two countries/lives/options with no clear “better.” She addresses this from a breadth of outlooks, within this single family, in such an amazing way.

This slim book covers relationships and people and situations/realities that stretch over time and space in a way that is so beautiful and precise and difficult and impactful and full. I don’t think I could give it enough hype or praise. I think it’s destined to be a favorite this year and I highly, highly, highly recommend it!

“...people who do horrible things can be victims, and how victims can be people who do horrible things.”

“Maybe […] we are creatures of passage, meant to cross oceans just like the first infectors of our continent in order to take back what was taken.”

“Still, they returned, even as the journey became harder, the hazards more vicious, convinced this land offered more than theirs had already taken from them.”

“Tragic, almost, that she never felt more patriotic than when grieving her country’s victims.”

“Only women knew the strength it took to love men through their evolution to who they thought they were supposed to be.”

“With the apparent logic that removing fathers is the most efficient method for undoing a family, the officers targeted men more often than women.”

“What was it about this country that kept everyone hostage to its fantasy? […] A nation at war with itself, yet people still spoke of it as some kind of paradise.”

“The price of being able to work to provide for the rest of the family was their estrangement.”

“We’re all migrants here on earth.”

“I wish I could see it again, but that’s the thing about being paperless. Tis country locks you in until it locks you out.”

“I remember wondering what it must feel like to belong to American whiteness and to know you can do whatever you want because nobody you love is deportable. Your worst crime might get you locked up forever but they’ll never take away your claim to this country.”

“Emigration was a peeling away of the skin. An undoing. You wake each morning and forget where you are, who you are, and when the world outside shows you your reflection, it’s ugly and distorted; you’ve become a scorned, unwanted creature.”

“I pictured being saved by some gravitational reversal, sprouting wings that would carry me from this place until I found myself among other migratory beings, bound for somewhere that feels more like home.”

“Eventually she’d understand that in matters of migration, even accidental, no option Is more moral than anther. There is only the path you make. Any other would be just as wrong or right.”

“But every nation in the Americas had a hidden history of internal violence. If just wore different masks, carried different weapons, and justified itself with different stories.”

“...we all have breaking points, we all have regrets and maybe more instances we don’t regret that society tells us we should. I told her I understand what it was to want to create justice to fix an injustice even if my justice could be considered a crime.”

“A life rendered will always be incomplete.”

“And maybe there is no nation or citizenry; they’re just territories mapped in place of family, in place of love, the infinite country.”

Content Warnings

sfbookgirl's review

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challenging dark emotional informative reflective tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

I…wow…I have no words for Infinite Country. This short, yet beautiful tale tells the story of a family split between the United States and Colombia. We learn about each member of the family and what it means to be a citizen of a country. Engel’s exquisitely-written story gives readers a perspective on immigration and what makes a person a citizen of a country. Infinite country held my attention for an entire weekend and is a book I recommend picking up if you haven’t already had the chance to.

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