The Flowers

by Dagoberto Gilb

Book Overview

Sonny Bravo is a tender, unusually smart fifteen-year-old who is living with his vivacious mother in a large city where intense prejudice is not just white against black, but also brown. When Sonny s mother, Silvia, suddenly marries an Okie building contractor named Cloyd Longpre, they are uprooted to a small apartment building, Los Flores. As Sonny sweeps its sidewalks, he meets his neighbors and becomes ensnared in their lives: Cindy, an eighteen-year-old...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B005SNNSIK
• ISBN13: 9780802144027
• Release Date: February 2009
• Publisher: Grove Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.4" x 8.2"

Customer Reviews

Another Fine Book

Like many, I am a fan of Gilb's earlier books, but I didn't even hear about this one getting published. Why is that? His publisher should do more to promote the Flowers because it might be his best book yet. It is one of the best contemporary novels I've read in years, one I'd love as a movie too. It grabs you from the first lines the narrator Sonny, a boy who is a man or vica versa, tells his story, and it does not let up until you reach the last line. I didn't put it down. The narrator Sonny is confined to a Los Angeles apartment complex in a neighborhood of the Watts Riots. What's captivating here is that the story is told not from the white or black but from the perspective of a Chicano. There is more to it than that, of course, several stories are being told, and done so dramatically and very poetically. The Hernandez twins are his clowns, though even the laughs have deeper meanings. Gilb's novel is as real and strong as his popular short stories. His work ought to get so much more attention and the Flowers more promotion. We need more from him, I want more!

a good straight to the point novel--excellent for children of single mothers.

If you are growing up or have grown up as an only child in a one-parent household, this story wil be particularly prescient.

Colors, sounds and texture...Synesthesia?

I picked up this book in San Francisco after hearing the author read an excerpt. I was moved by Dagoberto Gilb's spoken word. His prose in print was very much as his natural speaking voice--deliberate, honest and direct. I loved this book! I loved his use of colors, sounds and texture. I loved his choice of words, language (English, Spanglish, Spanish and French) and silence. I loved how he painted a real picture of society. The Flowers, is a bouquet of class, race, age and gender and the problems that connect and disconnect us. Don't be confused by Sonny's thoughts that are infused with shapes that bounce and blend into different shades. Dagoberto Gilb uses Sonny Bravo's synesthesia to paint a world of colors that clash, combine and enlighten. This is the first novel that I read where synesthesia seems to take on a character form by interacting with the sounds of the city and the people, the emotions of a young man experiencing love, lust and displacement, and the feelings of anger, justice and fear. This book is not about black and white, it is dark and gray with rays of a piercing white light that encompasses all colors and feelings of hope, happiness and opportunity. An added bonus: If you don't have synesthesia, you will definitely get an insight of how one senses shapes and colors in the frontal lobe area. Trust me, it is not something brought on by the use of psychedelic drugs.

our lady de los flores

The heart of the story's in that opening scene, where the protagonist, 15-year-old (or thereabouts) Sonny Bravo must face sexy and sometimes larcenous mother's irate suitor/employer, pissed 'cos mom's ripped him off, who comes kicking down the front door of Sonny's house, overpowering the kid, kicking his dog and injuring him with his own butcher knife. The tornadoes stirred up in Mother's wake continue to blow through young Sonny's life, landing him a role as stepson to an Okie yokel named Cloyd, whom mother, in her haste to escape earlier consequences, it is implied, has married. Cloyd owns the small apartment complex after which the novel is named, the FLowers. There's a kind of circular plot at work here. Like a hot southern cal wind spreading wildfires, it blows through that opening, spreading it first into the surrounding apartments at the Flowers, where other fires burn, fires of hateful racial prejudice, fires of sad, wasted girls pining lonely in night-time rooms, fires of adolescent sex-urge, of a youth's own moral conflicts and misplaced violence. These smaller personal fires then reach toward the city beyond, and finally even into history, as the fictional events here begin to resemble the actual, eg., the start of the '65 riots in LA. Does the Flowers pay homage to Jean Genet? Dished out in the narrative voice of a broken home kid who, strangely enough, is trying to learn French. Notre dame des fleurs...Our Lady de las Flores. The Flowers. Read it.

A Must Read

This novel narrated by Sonny Bravo, a wise and deep thinking fifteen year-old boy, reveals a story from a city where prejudice is intense not just between the white against black, but also the brown. When Sonny's mother, Silvia, suddenly marries the Okie building contractor, Cloyd Longpre, mother and son are uprooted to a small apartment building, where as Sonny sweeps its sidewalks, he meets his neighbors and becomes caught up in their lives. This cast of characters takes Sonny into the worlds of eighteen-year-old Cindy, who's boring marriage gives her an excuse to dose; then there is Nica, a the sheltered Mexican girl who care takes her infant brother but is a prisoner to her apartment. The other tenants range an albino black man named Pink, who sells old cars in front of the building, to Bud, a iron-pumping construction worker, whose prejudice is outward despite his marriage to a Mexican-American woman. Within the stories contained in this novel, narrated to us by Sonny, we are exposed to Gilb's most powerful work yet. Sonny's experiences transcend age, race, and time to reveal the fearlessness and wit that make Dagoberto Gilb one of the best voices in America Literature today. This is a book not to be missed.