Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Night at the Fiestas
    Night at the Fiestas
    Night at the Fiestas
    Audiobook8 hours

    Night at the Fiestas

    Written by Kirstin Valdez Quade

    Narrated by Alma Cuervo

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    ***National Book Foundation 2014 "5 Under 35" honoree*** Set in northern New Mexico, an astonishing, beautifully rendered debut about living in a landscape shaped by love, loss, and violence. With intensity, dark humor, and emotional precision, Kirstin Valdez Quade's unforgettable stories plunge us into the fierce, troubled hearts of characters torn between their desires to escape the past and to plumb its depths. The deadbeat father of a pregnant teenager tries to transform his life by playing the role of Jesus in a bloody penitential Passion. A young man discovers that his estranged father and a boa constrictor have been squatting in his grandmother's empty house. A young woman finds herself at an impasse when she is asked to hear her priest's confession. Always hopeful, these stories chart the passions and obligations of family life, exploring themes of race, class, and coming-of-age, as Quade's characters protect, betray, wound, undermine, bolster, define, and, ultimately, save one another. "A story writer of searing vision." (Anthony Marra, author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena) "A book of extraordinary virtuosity." (Justin Torres, author of We the Animals)
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateMar 23, 2015
    ISBN9781490677286
    Night at the Fiestas
    Author

    Kirstin Valdez Quade

    Kirstin Valdez Quade is the author of Night at the Fiestas, winner of the National Book Critics Circle's John Leonard Prize. The recipient of a "5 Under 35" award from the National Book Foundation, she teaches at Princeton University.

    Related to Night at the Fiestas

    Related audiobooks

    Literary Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    Related categories

    Reviews for Night at the Fiestas

    4/5

    40 ratings4 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Whew...feeling pretty stunned. These are all stories of jealousy and possession, identity and reputation. Loved the NM setting for most of the book and can't wait to read more.
    • 4/5
      Ever since I studied O Henry and Edgar Allan Poe in junior high, I have loved short stories. With this collection, Kristin Valdez Quade is added to my list of authors who have perfected this format. It’s difficult to rate a collection, because some of the stories resonate more with me than others. Quade gives us ten beautifully written stories in this collection. In The Five Wounds Amadeo tries to atone for past (and current) failures by playing the part of Jesus in the annual Good Friday re-enactment of the crucifixion, while his pregnant teen-aged daughter looks on. Andrea struggles between hating the wealthy land owner who employs her father, and desperately wishing she could be more like his daughter, Parker in Jubilee. In Mojave Rats Monica is feeling trapped with her two daughters, seven-year-old Cordelia and the infant Beatrice, in a sparsely populated trailer park, while her husband is off doing fieldwork for his Ph.D. Pregnant Crystal has found work and maybe a little hope as a secretary for the local parish priest in Original Sins. When the reader meets Frances in Night at the Fiestas, “she is pretending to be someone else, someone whose father is not the bus driver.”What Quade’s characters share is that desire to “be someone else” and/or somewhere else, but no real means of achieving that. They dream, but are somehow powerless to change their circumstances, falling back on old patterns of behavior, afraid to let go of their past to head into the future. Quade’s short story collection won the National Book Critics Circle Award for John Leonard Prize in 2015, and Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction (2016). She was named a National Book Foundation “Five Under Thirty-Five” Author.
    • 4/5
      This was a good book. The stories were interesting and I read it because of the hype. It does a good job of portraying cultural differences and life in the world of the Hispanic southwest. I do feel that when I review books that it is important to convey the positive and the negative so other readers can get an overall opinion of the book. This is a good book but I somehow felt that the writing didn't flow. Very hard to explain but it did feel like a new author who had created a formula. Worth reading for the insight into cultural differences. I will probably keep an eye on future books and maybe give her another look.
    • 4/5
      Night at the Fiestas is a collection of short stories by Kirstin Valdez Quade, a National Book Foundation "5 under 35" author. Quade is definitely deserving of this honor. Her characters are well-developed and the writing engaging. I love the sense of place she creates in the stories which take place in the southwest.

      It's a little hard to review this because I read the first four stories a few months ago, but had to return the book to the library and didn't get around to finishing the collection until now.