Velorio

From the opening sentence of Aquino’s debut, “It wasn’t until after I dug out her body that I learned to love my sister, Marisol,” listeners confront the disorientation, trauma, rage, and grief experienced by Puerto Ricans in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. In this dystopian narrative, the “Old Government” has basically collapsed and the islanders’ increasingly desperate circumstances are chronicled through alternating, rapid-fire bursts of narrative. A group of people, including Camila, Bayfish, Moriviví, Urayoán, Banto, and Cheo, meet in Memoria, a mountaintop settlement designed to be a self-sufficient utopia by a visionary whose authoritarian tendencies eventually threaten as much destruction as Hurricane Maria. Despite frequent point-of-view changes, listeners will connect deeply with the well-drawn characters thanks to Aquino’s sharp prose as well as the brilliant performances of Diana Pou, Vico Ortiz, María Victoria Martínez, Gil René Rodríguez, Jesús E. Martínez, Gabriel S. Rivera Vázquez, and Yetta Gottesman. The many Spanish phrases, stream-of-consciousness prose, and poetry woven throughout the narrative make this a challenging audiobook, as listeners do not have the opportunity to reread or get context clues as print readers would. The extreme violence throughout the novel could also make this a difficult listen for some.