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    Everyone Knows You Go Home
    Everyone Knows You Go Home
    Everyone Knows You Go Home
    Audiobook10 hours

    Everyone Knows You Go Home

    Written by Natalia Sylvester

    Narrated by Frankie Corzo

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    An International Latino Book Award winner.

    “Everyone Knows You Go Home is prescient, tackling issues of family division, the arduous journey of crossing from one country into the next, and the sacrifices we make in exchange for a better future.” —Houston Chronicle

    The first time Isabel meets her father-in-law, Omar, he’s already dead—an apparition appearing uninvited on her wedding day. Her husband, Martin, still unforgiving for having been abandoned by his father years ago, confesses that he never knew the old man had died. So Omar asks Isabel for the impossible: persuade Omar’s family—especially his wife, Elda—to let him redeem himself.

    Isabel and Martin settle into married life in a Texas border town, and Omar returns each year on the celebratory Day of the Dead. Every year Isabel listens, but to the aggrieved Martin and Elda, Omar’s spirit remains invisible. Through his visits, Isabel gains insight into not just the truth about his disappearance and her husband’s childhood but also the ways grief can eat away at love. When Martin’s teenage nephew crosses the Mexican border and takes refuge in Isabel and Martin’s home, questions about past and future homes, borders, and belonging arise that may finally lead to forgiveness—and alter all their lives forever.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateMar 13, 2018
    ISBN9781543626919
    Everyone Knows You Go Home
    Author

    Natalia Sylvester

    Natalia Sylvester is the author Running, her YA debut, as well as two novels for adults, Everyone Knows You Go Home, which won an International Latino Book Award, and Chasing the Sun. Born in Lima, Peru, she grew up in Miami, Central Florida, and South Texas, and received a BFA from the University of Miami. She currently lives in Austin, Texas. Look for her at nataliasylvester.com and follow her on Twitter @NataliaSylv.  

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    Reviews for Everyone Knows You Go Home

    4/5

    44 ratings3 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Everyone Knows You Go Home was beautifully written and moving. It is a family saga in the magical realism genre examining the secrets we keep. Along the way, it also looks at the struggles of undocumented immigrants, what they go through to get to the United States, and why they do it. I received a complimentary copy of this book via a Goodreads giveaway. Many thanks to all involved in providing me with this opportunity.
    • 4/5
      In this novel Sylvester explores some very current topics--illegal immigration (pre-Reagan and now), hope, danger, opportunity, fear, family, love, hard work, and more. She begins with Martin and Isabel, newlyweds and the American children of illegal immigrants who took advantage of Reagan's amnesty program, who are thrown for a loop soon after their marriage when an illegal high school aged cousin of Martin's arrives on their doorstep. Raised by Martin's father more than Martin himself was, Isabel struggles to understand the family dynamics, while Martin and his mother and sister ignore it.This novel has a bit too much magical realism for my taste, but it is done well and isn't actually needed for the story to come together--it provides more of a cultural taste without needing pages and pages of explanation.In many ways (that shall remain unexplained to avoid spoilers) this book reminds me of the movie Coco. The plot is certainly different, but the generational family dynamics are similar.
    • 4/5
      LITERARY FICTIONNatalia SylvesterEveryone Knows You Go HomeLittle AHardcover, 978-1-5420-4637-4, (also available as an e-book, an audio book, and on Audible) 334 pgs., $24.95March 13, 2018Isabel sees dead people. She and Martin were married on Día de los Muertos, “which no one gave much thought to in all the months of planning, until the bride’s deceased father-in-law showed up in the car following the ceremony.”Martin’s father, Omar, and his mother, Elda, crossed the Rio Grande while she was pregnant with Martin, delivered to McAllen to make what they could of their new beginning. Several years later, Omar disappeared without a trace and without explanation when Martin was seven years old. Two decades later, Isabel knows very little about Omar; no one in Martin’s family speaks of him. Omar reappears each year on Isabel and Martin’s wedding anniversary, and Isabel begins to ask questions. When Eduardo, a teenage cousin of Martin’s from his father’s side of the family in Mexico, arrives in an HEB parking lot, telling how Omar helped him make the journey to the border, the entire family must reckon with secrets from the past, and the precariousness of lives lived in-between.Everyone Knows You Go Home is the second novel from Austinite Natalia Sylvester, whose first novel, Chasing the Sun, was named the Best Debut Book of 2014 by Latinidad. In the storied tradition of magic realism, Everyone Knows You Go Home is a fine balance of tragedy and comedy, the interstices filled with the everyday sublime and ridiculous.The third-person narration moves back and forth in time, flashing back to Omar and Elda’s struggles to cross the border safely and establish a beachhead, then returning to the present, to the established lives of Isabel and Martin. Elegantly constructed, Everyone Knows You Go Home is briskly and evenly paced, clues carefully placed and plot twists seamlessly woven. There is very little exposition in this novel; Sylvester has a gift for showing us who her complex characters are through their reactions to events, their development flowing naturally. Her second novel is a rare thing, driven equally by character and plot.In Everyone Knows You Go Home, Sylvester’s use of magic realism has the feel of mythology in Omar’s descriptions of his afterlife limbo, and the apparent physics of his manifestation, buffering “like a video call reloading over a weak connection.” Omar is trapped, explaining to Isabel that he needs her help to redeem himself with Elda, because “sometimes our best intentions become our worst mistakes.”Sylvester is equally adept at humorous dialogue: Isabel turns to Martin; “Did you know this would happen?” she said. “No, but it’s typical of him … Only someone so shameless would show up to a wedding uninvited.”; and the poignant: “one piece of scarred skin after the other, [Eduardo] showed [Isabel] the souvenirs of his journey.” There is wisdom here, too. As Elda says, “Decisions are not the same as choices.” Sylvester manages to evoke this immigrant experience in two sentences that speak volumes. As Omar is wandering the halls of a McAllen high school, “He tried to imagine this being the world they grew up in. He thought, We might’ve stayed younger longer.”A satisfying, resonant ending concludes Sylvester’s emotionally insightful, multigenerational tale as the story comes full circle, beautifully complete.Originally published in Lone Star Literary Life.