To deny them requires force of writerly will, which Engel has in abundance. Consciously or not, readers expect scenes. This is an unusual choice, and an impressive one. Major plot points get compressed into short, vivid passages or paragraphs, rather than happening in a fiction-writer's effort - always doomed, of course - to replicate real time. Engel sometimes lingers in her characters' inner lives, but only Talia gets a scenic outer one. It also comes from a bold narrative decision: except in Talia's chapters, which provide the book's present-day tension, Infinite Country relies more on detailed narrative summary than on conventional scenes. In part, this speed comes simply from scoope: Engel's plot stretches over 20 years. Their first years in the U.S., during which Talia is born with an "ease stunned everyone," are arduous on every level, but still seem, much like Talia's birth, to fly by. Talia's parents, Mauro and Elena, fall in love, have their first child, and move to Texas in barely more pages than it takes Talia to leave the reform school. Often, she covers a period of years in only a few pages. In swift chapters that bounce between characters and chronologies, Engel moves from Talia's parents' courtship to their emigration to their forced split, and traces their fight afterwards to survive as individuals, and as a family.īook Reviews For Fall's Dark Days, 3 Tales In Translation To Match The MoodĮngel packs a lot of event and emotion into a slim novel. Infinite Country is less concerned with Talia's quest to reunite with her family, though, than with the choices and circumstances - and cruel immigration policies - that led to their initial separation. Her mother and siblings, Karina and Nando, live in New Jersey, where Talia is finally set to join them. Talia was born in the United States, but raised by her father and grandmother in Colombia. In only a few pages, Engel makes abundantly clear that Talia is more than equipped to escape the nuns and make her way back to Bogotá, where she has a plane to catch. In the first chapter of Patricia Engel's third novel, Infinite Country, a 15-year-old girl named Talia breaks free from a nun-managed reform school in the Colombian mountains.
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