Lucky Boy

I was really interested in how tension was presented with the alternate perspectives. For the first few parts, almost all of the first half, Soli’s, I was more interested in Soli’s sections. As soon as the perspective switch to Kavya’s, I found myself flipping through the pages to see how many until it was Soli’s turn again. Once we the readers are shown the psychological effects and the strain in the relationship when Kavya is unable to get pregnant despite all her methods, then the tension rises high. Until then, I was more invested in Soli who is in physical danger throughout her entire journey, and her stakes are constantly high with the fear of being deported. With every challenge she encountered, I feared for her, always expecting things to go worse. The initial connection might also have to do with being able to relate in some aspects to her fears, but the tension, I felt, was another.

With alternating/multiple perspectives, there are multiple stories—books—woven together. And at first, the two perspectives in Lucky Boy did feel like entirely different books. The characters’ goals were different in hindsight, but the main factor for me was the drastic levels of tension given to each one starting off. While Kavya was at a wedding for a woman she compared herself to, Soli was in a car with a stranger who planned to use her to transport drugs. When tension rose for Kavya as she became more desperate, more methodical, to have a child, Soli was alone in an onion car still trying to get to her destination. There was a time skip in Soli’s journey too.

Soli’s journey felt too tense, too terrifying that I wondered if that was why we don’t have her full journey until later. One section ended with her and Checo, and when we return to her she’s hiding with people she doesn’t know. I had to flip back to make sure I didn’t accidentally skip a section, or if I had glossed over an important detail. While I understood the gist of what had happened with the lines, “She did not dream of Checo, or of the brutish men who came later. The cave between her legs was numb, but her thighs were sticky and began to blister in the day’s heat” (page 58). I was aware of the horrific dangers women face in attempting to cross borders, in migrating. The descriptions “brutish men,” and “cave between her legs” was signal enough, one I hoped wasn’t true, but vague enough to keep me wondering about what exactly. The events aren’t revealed until later, in dreams, and I found that an interesting choice to make with the initial chronological flow of the narratives. But in a way, I appreciated it. I don’t know how’d I feel reading Soli’s sections, painful event after painful event, even if that is the correct chronological order. 

The amount of tension in the beginning of the book was high, but disproportionate in the two perspectives that it did feel like I was reading two separate books at the same time. Ignacio was the thread bridging the two books, but it also felt as if he was a different character to Soli’s and Kavya’s books, as both Nacho and Iggy. They are two sides, women who are humanized inside the complicated issues of immigration, class, and in motherhood.