A Good Map of All Things: A Picaresque Novel

by Alberto Alvaro Ríos

In Alberto Álvaro Ríos’s new picaresque novel, momentous adventure and quiet connection brings twenty people to life in a small town in northern Mexico. A Good Map of All Things is home to characters whose lives are interwoven but whose stories are their own, adding warmth and humor to this continually surprising communal narrative. The stories take place in the mid-twentieth century, in the high desert near the border—a stretch of land generally referred to as the Pimería Alta—an ancient passage through the desert that connected the territory of Tucson in the north and Guaymas and Hermosillo in the south. The United States is off in the distance, a little difficult to see, and, in the middle of the century, not the only thing to think about. Mexico City is somewhere to the south, but nobody can say where and nobody has ever seen it. Ríos has created a whimsical yet familiar town, where brightly unique characters love fiercely and nurture those around them. The people in A Good Map of All Things have secrets and fears, successes and happiness, winters and summers. They are people who do not make the news, but who are living their lives for the long haul, without lotteries or easy answers or particular luck. Theirs is the everyday, with its small but meaningful joy. Whether your heart belongs to a small town in Mexico or a bustling metropolis, Alberto Álvaro Ríos has crafted a book that is overflowing with comfort, warmth, and the familiar embrace of a tightly woven community.

Genres: Fiction

248 pages, Paperback

First published October 27, 2020

About the author

In 1952, Alberto Alvaro Ríos was born on the American side of the city of Nogales, Arizona, on the Mexican border. He received a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Arizona in 1974 and a MFA in Creative Writing from the same institution in 1979.

He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Dangerous Shirt (Copper Canyon Press, 2009); The Theater of Night (2007); The Smallest Muscle in the Human Body (2002), which was nominated for the National Book Award; Teodora Luna's Two Kisses(1990); The Lime Orchard Woman (1988); Five Indiscretions (1985); and Whispering to Fool the Wind (1982), which won the 1981 Walt Whitman Award, selected by Donald Justice.

Other books by Ríos include Capirotada: A Nogales Memoir (University of New Mexico Press, 1999), The Curtain of Trees: Stories (1999), Pig Cookies and Other Stories (1995), and The Iguana Killer: Twelve Stories of the Heart (1984), which won the Western States Book Award.

Ríos's poetry has been set to music in a cantata by James DeMars called "Toto's Say," and on an EMI release, "Away from Home." He was also featured in the documentary Birthwrite: Growing Up Hispanic. His work has been included in more than ninety major national and international literary anthologies, including the Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry.

"Alberto Ríos is a poet of reverie and magical perception," wrote the judges of the 2002 National Book Awards, "and of the threshold between this world and the world just beyond."

He holds numerous awards, including six Pushcart Prizes in both poetry and fiction, the Arizona Governor's Arts Award and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Since 1994 he has been Regents Professor of English at Arizona State University, where he has taught since 1982. He lives in Chandler, Arizona.

Reviews

[Debbie Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

I heard this author speak at the ASU bookclub. He was fascinating as he talked about growing up in Nogales on the border. This book is not really a novel but a collection of stories about people in the same border town.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing. Characters that must be real, and echo and reverberate in time. Language compelling imagery. I can smell and see and feel all of it. A work of art, and of the heart.

[Corinne · Rating 5 out of 5]

"...it was a dance and a party and a show and a soap opera and a song readying itself to be written and a movie, and a good time was had by all." p 49

"In that moment, an all that happiness that the children felt and which, in turn, he could feel, he was himself for a moment young again. They were all in this moment together." p 146

"Ubaldo in that moment understood that he and Ignacio were goig to be good friends after all. The better part of that understanding was that they would have to be good friends - there was no getting around it. This suited Ubaldo. The niceties would be put in place overnight, without all the years that might have had to go into building such a relationship. They knew people who knew each other, and in this way they were already best friends. Just like that. But the good kind of just like that." p 178

"Underwork meant taking into account everything else along with the thing that needed to be done... Everybody knew about overwork. But underwork was the real trick. It was the work under the work that was so often the most important part of her day." p 207

[Shannon Wold · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here is yet another book I am adding to my list, even though I read it last year. It's the only example I can think of of a picaresque novel that I have read. Somebody mentioned a book on Twitter that, when I looked it up, is also classified as a picaresque novel. That made me remember that I had read something and I went searching. It took me a while to find this. I remember liking it and thinking it was very different from anything else I had ever read. I thought it was a really good story. Alberto Álvaro Ríos is a local author who I had heard about, but did not know anything about him. I had seen a review of this book and that it was coming out and I thought it would be interesting to read it

[Dave Mills · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ríos writes with a rhythm, a pulse, a flow that just makes you feel good . . . and yearn for more. You'll enjoy his writing like you enjoy sitting by a brook, or looking at the clouds, or watching the moon. His prose is still poetry. His stories are grand in a small way. He tells of the village, but you see the world in that village. Peace, kindness, love, friendship. It's all here.
Ríos was Arizona's first Poet Laureate (2013). He graduated from the University of Arizona and has taught at Arizona State University since 1982.

[Katherine · Rating 4 out of 5]

A series of vignettes set in a small town in Northern Sonora, Mexico. Quite charming. I especially liked the story told from the dog's point of view. The events in the stories do interweave to some extent.

[Kayla Zabcia · Rating 5 out of 5]

95%


"It felt good to stop looking at the world and start feeling it."

This book was on the "Southwest Books of the Year 2021" list compiled by the Pima County Library. Usually I'm not a fan of books that win awards because they tend to be depressing or dramatic, but this book was neither. It was an entirely unusual book - a compilation of 14 stories about people (and one dog) all living in the same town, all within a ~50 year time period.

* For the most part each story had a point/message. Those that didn't felt like they were purposely written to be vague, open-ended, and a bit baffling - truly snippets into a character's life and their, well, character. Usually I'm not a fan of vagueness in my readings, but within the context of a compilation of normal people's lives it actually made sense and felt deliberate in its ambiguity. Life isn't just a bunch of events/actions filled with meaning and reason, and in fact, a lot of it is pretty aimless and unimportant (but of course, entirely important in its aimlessness and unimportantness)

* Each story was preceded by a document (business card, green card, photograph, etc.) with a short, thoughtful, quaintly poetic commentary on it that in one way or another tied in with the stories. This was very subtle, and it took me until the third document/story to realize the pattern, but it was really a lovely touch that breathed even more life in the characters and their lives.

* A chart of all the people and their relationships to one another would have been nice, since this book involves people at different stages in their lives, and the time periods can get a little confusing. The drawn map in the beginning of the book was helpful.

"the twentieth century had promised everything, but once it got to work, the new century was just one more in a long line of disappointments"

"When these things happened, it was generally more convenient all around for people if the impact was a little harder or the outcome a little more certain. That there might be something to do, that's when people panic."

"she knew what to take from animals, from science, and from the earth itself, one thing not more or less important than the other"

"Energy at the end of the day always meant something didn't get done, and that turned into worry, and that turned into unhappiness and difficulty sleeping. No, tired was better. Tired was good."

"nothing strangled him, and that gave him a different outlook on the world"

"These people around him, they were the true daredevils and acrobats, living their precarious and delicate lives, doing in these circumstances the extraordinary work of picking up the simplest of things, mustering up the sheer will to walk a few steps out into the yard or onto the street. These were the bravest ones. These were the real lions. The tigers and elephants."

"What kept them going as that they did it together. They practiced words on each other. They filled out forms together, and they laughed. There was not much to laugh about, but that didn't stop them."

"The world had changed, and the answers had changed. Hard work used to be the answer, but now it seemed like hard work was just hard work, and that doing it only meant more of it."

"underwork took just as much work as overwork, but instead of focusing on the task at hand, the focus was on the impact of the task at hand - that is, it meant not simply serving a person but watching the person being served, asking one thing or another....underwork meant taking into account everything else along with the thing that needed to be done....underwork was the real trick. it was the work under the work that was so often the most important part of her day"

"but that was exactly what was wrong with science. it was never quite big enough for all the things the world had to offer"

"We write to each other, and have since ancient times....It is a way of hearing someone's voice as if they were there. A letter says things - for good, for bad, as instruction, as information, as testament, as witness. It can declare both love and war. A simple piece of paper, speaking. Through all time and space we sit to listen, and hope every time that it is love. Red ink love."

[Maggie · Rating 2 out of 5]

The one and only picaresque novel I have ever read. A book club selection.

[Sam Andrade · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful imagery, collection of stories were very poetic. Not a must-know-what-happens read, but engaging nonetheless. Reminded me of Tucson and my Sonoran desert upbringing.