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To Be a Young Girl in Colombia: A Review of "Fruit of the Drunken Tree"

Fruit of the Drunken Tree is a novel narrated by two Colombian girls living opposing lives. The first, Chula, is a seven-year-old girl who lives in her middle-upper class home with her father, an engineer at an oil company, her mother, a rags-to-riches housewife, and her older sister Cassandra. 

Petrona, the family's housemaid is the second narrator of the book. She is a 13-year-old victim of the Colombian Paramilitary displacement and poses a constant mystery for Chula's family, the Santiagos, as well as for their neighbors. Chula's mother thinks she's "too quiet," the Soltera next door thinks she's bad news, but Chula, on the other hand, finds her fascinating. 

Together, these two narrators gather the broad story of a Colombia in shambles, where horror runs rampant among narco-wars and safety is short-lived within the story of two families down on their luck: one with money, and the other without. They show what it was like to be a young girl in Colombia in the '80s and '90s. To grow up understanding death as a very real possibility. 

As Petrona gains a place for herself in the home of the Santiagos, their father seems to lose his. His daughters cling to the maid and his wife to another man. However, all ties seem to break when the terror they've watched on television and at presidential rallies inches closer and closer to their home until finally penetrating it. 

The language in the novel is impeccable, its spontaneous spits of Spanish absolutely necessary. There's something about it that feels like it's throwing a wink to anyone who "gets" the joke; like we're all in a club of sorts, a Spanish club. This code-switching has certainly been the pattern for books that preceded it like Sandra Cisneros' The House on Mango Street, works by Junot Diaz, and Roberto G. Fernandez. 

In Fruit of the Drunken Tree Chula's mother's way of speaking reminded me of every aunt in Colombia. The way she'd come up with metaphors on the spot: "Trust is water in a glass..." it feels like you're being led down a road with a path of childhood Spanish gems.

"Red alert," we heard one guard say, and at first I was excited because maybe there was a murder under way, but then I saw the guard was staring at a woman in a red skirt coming out to water the plants in her garden.

However, what truly put me over the edge to give this book 5 out of 5 stars was definitely how quickly Chula's character goes from gleeful to anxious. At first, the possibility of catching a murder would excite her. By the second half of the book, when death is on every channel and in every room of her home, she develops anxiety that every Colombian girl of the time can relate to. 

Simply said, Ingrid Rojas Contreras has shed light on a time that TV and movie producers can't seem to get right and retold it in a stunningly unique way. 

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