Twin Time: Or, How Death Befell Me

Defying easy categorization, Gonzalez's debut novel is an often-mesmerizing account of a young woman's search for the truth about her parents, with absorbing stream-of-consciousness passages that draw the reader into her mind. After her father dies, Mona tries to track down her twin brother, from whom she was separated in childhood. As Mona envisions the past, she sees her naïve mother, Mara, trying to escape from her depressing youth in Mexico City by indulging in a rich fantasy life, fueled by frequent attendance at the local movie theater, until her pregnancy forces her to face reality. Gonzalez's hypnotic writing has some elements of noir, but the absence of a crime or more formal investigation might disappoint genre readers.