Night at the Fiestas: Stories

I'm not sure how I came across this book, as it's not one I would buy, based on the information about it; however, I am SO glad it was around my house. It's good to get out of your "comfort zone," with fiction, and Ms. Valdez Quade is certainly as far from this anglo male as you can get. Her writing is lucid, it's interesting, the stories are compelling and moving. When you feel torn between reading faster, so you can get more of the story, and slower, so you can enjoy the prose and the sound and the language more, you know you're in the hands of a winner. I can't wait for her next book.

“Night at the Fiestas: Stories”, by Kirstin Valdez Quade, consists of 11 short stories. In my experience it’s rare in a short story collection for all the stories to be strong and solid, but that is indeed the case here; each is a unique and polished gem. If I may generalize on the tone and mood of these stories I would say they all carry a tinge of the grotesque – (similar to famed short story writer Flannery O’Connor) – which is tricky to pull off, yet Quade managed brilliantly. 4.5

Night At the Fiestas is a brilliant short story collection.Kristen Valdez-Quades is an architect storyteller who built momentum in each story.Her prose has the subtle power to teach readers, students, writing teachers, and professional authors how to design compelling experiences.In each episode she arrected a fictionalized anthropological, political, sociological, psychological, and theological temple. This allowed for the potential development of every story to stand alone as it's own novel or family miniseries saga.As readers proceed with each account they will discover Valdez-Quades constructed an authentic SouthWestern community for everyone to settle in.It is perfect for high school and college students alike to read at home or in schools.However, adult readers will appreciate the literary techniques, adult themes, and multivisceral world she structured.

I like all of these stories. The desert is it's own recurring character. The desert's vastness reflecting all of our loneliness and dreams. The characters in Quades stories seem polarized between being innocents eager to be sophisticated and more culturally aware or people who already know their sins too well. All of them are hungry for a new self but their imagination can't comprehend the cost of that experience. We follow along with them knowing their actions and words will go too far but it feels good as a reader to both like and feel sorry for the characters. It makes a persons empathy expand. Thanks for the great writing.

I just could not get interested in the story. Was it the lack of historical context? The overly pretty language? I can't get started even.There isn't enough place, and who are these characters in New Mexico and Arizona.I should like a book based in the Southwest, but I just didn't feel anything.It felt superficial and false.

I first fell in love with Kirstin Valdez Quade when I read a story not included in this collection, Kidline, which won the Mississippi Review’s 2014 fiction prize. In Kidline, a lonely, superior sixth grade girl meets a blind transfer student who quickly surpasses her in popularity and social confidence. What the lonely girl ends up doing to her blind classmate is almost cartoonish in its cruelty – the kind of outrageous behavior that gives a quietly told tale a welcome jolt of adrenaline – but it only makes us care all the more deeply for the twelve year old who is just learning who she is. Quade’s work is a master class in learning how to forgive. This new collection is reviewed at length at http://bestnewfiction.wordpress.com

I read this with a book club. One thing we universally agreed was that the writing style, voice, and characters were superb. There isn't a wasted word, and most stories feel perfectly suited for the short story genre. Read individually, each story is well-crafted, the characters develop appropriately for the timeline, and the events are intriguing without being cliche or over-wrought.We disagreed a bit on whether the stories were well-suited to be collected as they were. The characters have strong, unique voices, but there are several stories concerning young women of a similar age. Some of us felt that made the compilation even stronger, allowing the reader to compare reactions to a similar emotion through varied lenses. But some felt that as a collection it was less diverse than it could have been. Favorite stories were "Nemecia," "Night at the Fiestas," and "The Manzanos."Would recommend this to others!

This is an amazing collection of short stories by a gifted writer. Quade writes from the heart, giving life to characters in a landscape we might otherwise pass unnoticed. Her use of language is strong - a punch in the gut to reader. She knows the people who inhabit her stories: their quirks and demons, where bad choices made from innocence, lack of opportunity and fierce love, have real consequences in the world. I generally read short fiction as a change of pace from longer works. This volume is one that I recommend for every serious reader.

I haven’t read this book I bought it for my granddaughters who said she would give it 5 stars.This author has been compared to Alice Munro who is one of her favourite authors.

Think of the entertaining and mesmerizing story of "The Milagro Bean Field War", with local characters, a big dab of chili, love, hate, complications, solutions, redemption ... but for all "engrossing reading!"