#Friday56 & #BookBeginnings: Mariposa Gang

For Book Beginnings:
One morning, the bug lady sent us out with our nets to practice catching butterflies. She made us stand in a circle with our catch, their wings folded back, bodies pressed between our finger and thumb. Don't ask me why, but that put them out cold. Didn't quite kill them, which was a pain, because we had to put them in mayonnaise jars with cotton balls soaked in rubbing alcohol to finish them off.

- p. 1, from the short story "Mariposa Gang"

For Friday 56:

She knew this was the end of the line. Strangely, she felt neither sad nor elated, merely relieved.

p. 56, from the short story "Blown Glass'

Synopsis of Mariposa Gang and Other Stories by Catherine Torres: A maid packs her bags after learning that her employer values her less than a murano vase. A young man enters the priesthood when he is spurned by the woman he loves and is sent on a mission to the backwaters of West Bengal. A pampered heiress goes on exchange study in Tokyo to prove her independence and finds herself stuck without heating in the middle of winter. A seaman avenges his daughter and is banished to a penal farm, where he spends his days catching rare butterflies. These ten stories by Catherine Torres are about women and men navigating various forms of exile, and recovering, or discovering, ‘home’ in surprising, often startling, ways.

***

I was contacted by a fellow Filipino who happens to be an author and she kindly sent me two books for review consideration. This is one of them. It seems she knows I like immigrant stories and short stories! I'm excited to be discovering and reading more Filipino-authored books ...

Do these short stories interest you?