Ana Castillo’s short story collection Loverboys is one of the most beautiful books I have ever read. It’s so smooth, it feels like someone is talking to me and in doing so enchanting me instead of me actively reading. I feel like I’m in a dream while reading it to the point that I sometimes lose sense of the longer stories’ plots because I am so engrossed in the characters and how vivid they feel.
One of the things I love about Castillo’s writing is her descriptions of food, which always make me ravenous. Loverboys makes me hungrier than any of her other books aside from The Guardians. I also am enthralled by its lesbian love stories because they are so matter-of-fact, which is refreshing. The narrators in all of the stories grab love where they can find it, realizing how precious it is, and do not let its loss crush them, instead moving on to find it somewhere else. It is a hopeful book. It both makes me want to write about it professionally and send it to all of my good friends, a combination that I do not often experience.
Daniel Shank Cruz 