The crystal frontier

The nine stories comprising this brilliant new novel from Carlos Fuentes all concern people who in one way or another have had something to do with, or still are part of, the family of one Leonardo Barroso, a powerful oligarch of northern Mexico with manifold connections to the United States. Each story concerns a Mexican-American encounter - sometimes hilarious, often tragic, frequently ambivalent, inevitably poignant - and each unique drama in its own way epitomizes some striking contrast along the invisible, reflective, dangerous frontier that divides the American-Mexican world.