A sticky marvel in the jungle

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By

CELLOPHANE

By Marie Arana

Dial Press, $24, 384 pages

REVIEWED BY YAEL GOLDSTEIN

I've never before been tempted to use the word "luscious" to describe a work of fiction, but "Cellophane," the debut novel by Marie Arana, whose 2001 memoir, "American Chica," was a finalist for the National Book Award, strikes me as demanding the adjective.

The gorgeously evocative writing, fantastical jungle setting, and picaresque narrative that seems to cling to the border where high drama slides almost irresistibly into melodrama, together conspire to bring forth a reading experience so fully sensory that it's rather how I imagine it would feel to step into the Amazonian dreamscape in which the novel is set.

The first impression one has upon entering the world of madly ambitious engineer Don Victor Sobrevilla and his family is of an extravagant proliferation of life, as exotic new plotlines sprout forth from nearly every page.

But as these stories gracefully twine around each other like so many greedy vines, it becomes the density that overwhelms one's senses: the delicious disorientation that comes from no longer caring where one thing ends and another begins, and instead simply reveling in the confusing tangle of an organic whole.