Family Album is Ecuadorian author Gabriela Alemán's rollicking follow up to her acclaimed English-language debut, Poso Wells. Alemán is known for her spirited and sardonic take on the fatefully interconnected--and often highly compromised--forces at work in present-day South America, and particularly in Ecuador. In this collection of eight hugely entertaining short stories, she dives deep into the tales that Ecuadorian's like to tell about themselves, following the foundational creation myths of that small South American nation all the way to their logical and sometimes ignominious ends. A muddy brew of pop-culture and pop-folklore yields intriguing, lesser-known episodes of contemporary Ecuadorian history, along with a rich cast of unforgettable minor characters whose intimate stories open up onto a vista of Ecuador's place on the world stage, now and all along the way. Alemán teases tropes of hardboiled detective fiction, satire, and adventure narratives to recast the discussion of historical forces and national identity. The stories provide a humorous spin on universal themes of human frailty and desire, while taking on some difficult and complex issues, including misogynistic violence, the exploitation and appropriation of natural resources, violence against indigenous groups, religious tensions, political corruption, and the steady flow of illicit drugs. From a pair of deep-sea divers using Robinson Crusoe's map of a shipwreck to locate sunken treasure in the seas of the Galapagos Archipelago, to an outlaw pilot who flies a group of missionaries from the American Midwest deep into the Amazon jungle, where their attempt to convert an indigenous village results in a massacre, opening the way for the appropriation of natives' land by oil companies; from a small group of mysterious Germans who took refuge on an unpopulated Galapagos island during the lead-up to the Second World War, to a night with the husband of Ecuador's most infamous expat, Lorena Bobbit, this series of cracked "family portraits" provides a cast of heroes and anti-heroes in stories that sneak up on a reader before they know what's happened: they've learned a great deal more about a country whose more well known exports--soccer, coffee and cocoa--mask a much more intriguing national story that's ripe for the telling.
