Lovesick
Angela Mastretta

Lovesick is the story of Emilia Sauri, daughter of Diego, a Mayan pharmacist, and Josefa, a Spanish beauty. She is also a daughter of the twentieth-century, growing up at the time of the Mexican revolution, whose ambition to become a doctor is periodically subsumed by her volatile relationship with her childhood sweetheart Daniel Cuenca.

This is Gabriel Garcia Marquez meets Gone With the Wind; events tumble upon each other with belief-suspending rapidity, the never-less-than-extraordinary qualities of the characters – “his father had discovered Diego’s gift when he saw the boy surreptitiously reviving a gasping fish intended for the dinner table” – are sketched in bold relief, and the lovers’ adolescent fervour and interminable partings and reunions begins to be wearing. The strength of the novel is not, in fact, in the love story, but in the sense of home which Mastretta creates, which appears to be a lodestone for Emilia more than is the rather trying Daniel. The relationship between Emilia’s parents – loving and sensual but touched by everyday irritations – is expertly conjured, as are the physical contours of their home, “the mirrored corridor on the second floor of La Casa de la Estrella . . . crowded with flowers and plants and lit by an almost brutal sun”.

This is an ambitious, vigorous novel, which lacks the surreal quality that sparks “real” magic realism, transmuting incredible events which might other wise seem ludicrous. The endless coincidences and verbiage of Lovesick could have been done more deftly, but it is never less than readable, and Emilia is a satisfyingly feisty heroine.

Reviewed by Helena Mary Smith