This is Also a House

Cezanne Cardona has outgrown the label of a promising writer—he is a commanding voice who deserves to be read, applauded, and respected.” —Luis Rafael Sánchez

Javi lives in a wooden house above the hardware store his mother runs. But depending on the weather, his grandfather, the gunshots, or his father’s fury, Javi’s house can be either upstairs or downstairs. Upstairs, his mother is named Pilar; downstairs, she’s a Candy Girl. Upstairs, his father is a welding mask; downstairs, a ghost. Upstairs, Javi changes his grandfather’s diapers; downstairs, he scares off his mother’s suitors. Upstairs, he makes snow by rubbing foam blocks together; downstairs, he builds a beach with sand sold by the sack. Upstairs, Javi is a cruel child; downstairs, a tender teenager. Upstairs he’s a gringo; downstairs, Puerto Rican.

This Is Also a House is a tour de force between a son and a mother, a house and a hardware store, between what can be fixed and what never will be, between pain and tenderness, and between the beauty and violence that come with life in the Caribbean. With prose that is clean and precise, deep and subtle, this novel lives up to Nabokov’s commandment: “caress the details, the divine details.