The Meaning of Consuelo

Puerto Rican novelist, essayist and poet Cofer (The Latin Deli, etc.) chronicles the childhood and young adulthood of Consuelo, a bookish girl growing up in a San Juan suburb in the 1950s. Cofer's novel is richly descriptive of the shifting mores of Puerto Rican culture and the historical particularities of the era (especially the growing American presence on the Caribbean island), but its deeper elements-Consuelo's growth into maturity; her sister's developing schizophrenia; and the demise of h...