4.5 stars. I loved this novel. The writing is beautiful. It's a short novel, sparse but powerful. The story of the family is compelling, and the characters are richly drawn. Timely, as well, dealing with the immigrant experience, both documented and not.

"At the dawn of the new millennium, Colombia is a country devastated by half a century of violence. Elena and Mauro are teenagers when they meet, their blooming love an antidote to the mounting brutality of life in Bogotá. Once their first daughter is born, and facing grim economic prospects, they set their sights on the United States.

They travel to Houston and send wages back to Elena’s mother, all the while weighing whether to risk overstaying their tourist visas or to return to Bogotá. As their family expands, and they move again and again, their decision to ignore their exit dates plunges the young family into the precariousness of undocumented status, the threat of discovery menacing a life already strained. When Mauro is deported, Elena, now tasked with caring for their three small children, makes a difficult choice that will ease her burdens but splinter the family even further.

Award-winning, internationally acclaimed author Patricia Engel, herself the daughter of Colombian immigrants and a dual citizen, gives voice to Mauro and Elena, as well as their children, Karina, Nando, and Talia—each one navigating a divided existence, weighing their allegiance to the past, the future, to one another, and to themselves. Rich with Bogotá urban life, steeped in Andean myth, and tense with the daily reality for the undocumented in America, Infinite Country is the story of two countries and one mixed-status family—for whom every triumph is stitched with regret and every dream pursued bears the weight of a dream deferred."

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

This beautiful story follows a Columbian family across decades as they seek a better life against the backdrop of the collapse of their home country and the racism and red tape of their adopted home.

Engle has written a heart-wrenching and deeply emotional portrait of a family who persist in the face of overwhelming hostility - to build a life, to take care of one another, to be together.

Wow. The characters and subjects of this novel won't leave my heart or head for a long time. I read this brilliant book in one sitting - soaking in the subjects of family and tradition and sacrifices and choices and consequences and love. Learning about another culture I know almost nothing about was fascinating all the while nodding my head at the similarities I have with these character's intense feelings as they make really difficult decisions.

This would be an excellent book group choice as there's so many relateable themes combined with a completely new setting and culture that I had never encountered.

Don't pass this one up...I'm buying a hard copy when it's released to gift to my friends and family.

Thanks to Netgalley and Avid Reader Press for this advanced copy.

I’m judging a 2021 fiction contest. It’d be generous to call what I’m doing upon my first cursory glance—reading. I also don’t take this task lightly. As a fellow writer and lover of words and books, I took this position—in hopes of being a good literary citizen. My heart aches for all the writers who have a debut at this time. What I can share now is the thing that held my attention and got this book from the perspective pile into the read further pile.

“The nuns believed silence a weapon, teaching the girls that only with it could they discover the depths of their interior without being servants to the temptations of this world.” Gah! What a great line.

4.5 Stars

Beautiful story of a Colombian family who migrates to the United States for a better life, only to experience hardship, family tragedy and a branding as unwelcome strangers in the American communities they inhabit.

The story of parents taking extreme measures to make a better life for their children is not a new one. But, the plight of Columbian immigrants is one of which not many are familiar.. Most Americans are only familiar with Columbia’s decades-long reputation for illegal drugs and corruption. This story puts a human face on South American immigrants.

Patricia Engel also infuses her novel with vivid imagery of ancient Colombian folk lore and the dichotomy those tales impart of the beauty and brutality that exists in both people and nature. Similarly, this novel illustrates that beauty can be found in the love of family, even if that love is tested by separation and dire circumstances.

Thank you to Simon & Schuster for providing me with an ARC!

If Your Country Bleeds, Will you still call it Yours?


“This land with all its beauty, still manages to betray itself.”

Summary

Infinite country is a heart-wrenching story of a family’s traumatic journey of leaving behind their bleeding country, and immigrating to an unknown land in the hope of a better life. Talia is a fifteen year old girl, planning an escape from a correctional facility in Colombia to fulfil her long cherished dream to meet her mother & siblings in US, her birth country which she hardly remembers. Elena & Mauro, who left together for US, are scarred forever from the choices they had to make in order to survive which left them separated beyond boundaries. While Mauro has a perpetual guilt of not being able to protect his family, Elena paid an unimaginable price for her children. Amidst the fear of deportation from one, and death in another country they yearn for a single day to live as an ordinary family in a place they can call home. It is their story of love, loss, sacrifice, dreams and endless struggle to live as a family.


Structure & Elements of the Story

Infinite Country is a General Fiction (Adult) Novel written by an award-winning and internationally acclaimed author Patricia Engel about the unspoken trauma of undocumented immigrant families. It is a poignant account of survival under the terror of being deported back from a country of opportunities & better life to their war-torn motherland where they have no future. Lingering nostalgia, guilt, separation, love, and the feeling of alienation in the strange land constructs this heart-wrenching tale.

“We all went our ways to live the life we never meant to live. It was a strange life.”

The narrative is richly weaved with Colombian folklore, forgotten traditions, bewitching beauty and a history drenched in bloodshed & violence of Colombia, which reflects the author’s Colombian roots & deep knowledge of the country. 


Story Development & Writing

The author succeeds in evoking our sympathy with her moving portrayal of the plight of Elena & Mauro’s family. It breaks our hearts to see Karina, a young and talented girl question her existence in the world. The fleeting sense of belonging to one’s motherland and inability to decide where she belongs is evident when we see Talia referring to US, her birth country as ‘that country’ and Colombia, where she is brought up as ‘this country’, as there is no country of her own. The author has vividly captured and narrated the trauma that each family member suffers in this painful journey of losing and finding each other.


Recommendation

Infinite Country will stir your soul and move you beyond your imagination. It compels your senses to feel the pain of leaving your country, your identity behind even if it won’t ensure your survival. We do not acknowledge the privilege to live with our families in a safe and sound environment without any fear of being separated or killed for no reason. This story makes us realize and leave us rolling in tears over the price some of us have to pay for this ordinary privilege. It will lead you to question 'Do boundaries matter more than love and all that makes us human?' I recommend 'Infinite Country' as a must read in 2021. It is an unforgettable story that will stay in your heart forever.

"We are only soil and water baked in the sun to dry”

All the opinions and comments are posted voluntarily by Shelley Reviews and we thank NetGalley and the Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster for providing an advanced reading copy of the book in exchange of fair and honest review.


Shelley Reviews Ratings

Story: 4.5

Structure & Elements: 4.5

Writing:4.5

Creativity:4.5

Overall Rating: 4.5

Infinite Country is the multi-generational story of a Columbian family and their experiences with emigration.

Immigration is often presented in black and white terms, and this book examines the multiple facets.

Realistically flawed characters are brought to life by Engel's gorgeous prose and the settings-the barrios and mountains of Columbia, various suburban American cities- become characters in their own right.

The Andean mythology that sustains Mauro is contrasted with the casual middle-class excesses of Houston and New Jersey resulting in a nuanced retelling of how it feels to leave behind a motherland as Elana, Mauro, and their children each try to find their place in a divided continent.

This book is heart-breaking yet hopeful without ever being mawkish. So thankful I got to read this one from @netgallery and I'm a Patricia Engel fan for life.

wow! yes! tears were shed! my heart hurts! ok! here we go!

this is a truly wonderful novel, one of my favorite stories about migration and displacement and separation. the glass shards on border lines drawn on maps that can tear apart families, leaving as death but also a rebirth. the internal instability of growing up in a place that is not yours, not home. what is home when it is the place of your residence and the place of your birth and the place of your family all at once. i loved the way engel told this story, using the present narrative of talia finding her way to her father to interweave the story of elena and mauro's past and journeys, both storylines eventually merging, culminating into a truly emotional, bittersweet ending that left me in tears. look, if my love is not as strong as elena and mauro's then i don't fuckin want it.

i loved how engel intertwined andean myth and folktale into the story. i also liked how the story was then revealed as a chronicle written by karina, as a record of her family, if for no one else, then for them. none of the characters were really fully developed as characters; they were mostly narrated through third-person storytelling which made them seem more like characters playing a role rather than individuals. yet this somehow humanized them more. like their stories were not just their stories but the anonymous and universal stories of millions of families separated at and by imaginary lines drawn across land. that as long as humans are humans who are driven by motion, migration, and humans continue to etch these fictitious yet tragically real lines on maps, there will always be these bounds to, and if i can quote engel here, "a phantom pain of a lost homeland." what is lost is not physical land or citizenry or this perilous status of "documented" vs. "undocumented" but space carved out by family alone. to put it simply, home is the space for those you love.

The subject of this novel, a Colombian family of mixed immigration status, is current and necessary. The beginning is misleading, as it starts with Talia, a teenage girl. She is stuck in a reform school, yet breaks free in time to catch a flight to the United States where she was born. The book then backtracks to tell the story of Talia's parents, Mauro and Elena, who met in Bogotá. After their first daughter, Karina, is born, they head to the US in search for better opportunities. Several mishaps lead to Mauro's deportation, and so the family is then split. Elena remains in the US with their (now) three children while Mauro returns to Colombia. To better survive their circumstances, Elena ends up sending her youngest, Talia, back to Colombia to be raised by her mother, and eventually Mauro too after he overcomes his depression. The story then moves around to show how each half of the family survives this split. Engel doesn't just describe the events, but also the toll this hardship takes on their emotional and mental health. She provides the kind of detail that we simply don't get from news stories reporting on this topic. There is no simple or happy ending, but only the impact of the story.

Infinite Country is a beautiful and haunting look at what it means to belong, through the eyes of a Colombian family and their journey to America. Engel's language paints a portrait of immigration that is as stark as it is lyrical, with prose that skillfully blends fiction with mythology, reality with art. While I found the sudden narrative switches that came a little over halfway through to be abrupt, I cannot deny that the different voices brought me closer to the main characters as a fully realized family, torn asunder by the inhumanity of America's immigration system. This short book enraged, enthralled, and completely captivated me; I highly recommend it to anyone who wants a more intimate study of the impossible choices people in the quest to give their children--and themselves--a better life.

Infinite Country: ⭐⭐⭐⭐💫

“It was her idea to tie up the nun.”

With this opening line, this novel stole my attention. I flew through it with ease, plowing through 25% of the novel before I needed to refill my drink. But what starts as Talia’s daring escape from a juvenile prison expands as the background of it comes into focus. Talia is a “long-distance” daughter, living with her father in Colombia while her mother and siblings continue their lives in America. She reaches her breaking point and commits a crime - though not everyone may call what she did evil. This question permeates the novel, coloring the story of a mixed status family who faces deportation.

The story hones in on the dissonance between the reasons this family pursued a life in America and what actually happening - it captures the way our lives whizz past us and only after do we see what was lost. While the story is gripping, the characters seem to be intentionally vague. We don’t really get deep into personality traits or the things that make us human. Instead, we are focused on experience, decisions, and outcomes. The sadness that Elena, the mother, must stay in America with her two older children while her husband is deported. The cruelty that she was the one who protested their move in the first place. And the loss of splitting the family apart, meeting years laters as strangers who share blood. In some ways, the general vagueness of the novel made it powerful, because this story applies to countless families.

I loved how Engels wove Andean mythology into the narrative to feed plot elements.It planted just enough seeds to raise important questions in my mind - for example, the searing title “The United States of Diasporica” reminded me how often I take the congealed diasporic nature of America for granted - mostly because I am a part of that #diaspora narrative. In no way am I an #ownvoices reader of the book, but is remarkable the thread of sacrifice and uncertainty that connects all immigrants, documented or otherwise.

Thank you @netgalley and @avidreaderpress for this #arc edition! Check this out in Feb 2021!
Also thanks @book.ish.bitch for doing a buddy read w me, can't wait to chat

One family's story of living undocumented. This novel spans three generations of a family as they are split between Colombia and the United States.

The juxtaposition of the struggles in Colombia versus the struggles in the US give this novel a sense of uneasiness that echos through the plot.

This book offers insight into just one family's experience, and how they found themselves torn between two countries, neither of which ever feel like a safe haven. Knowing that this family is one of many, only strengthens the themes and message.

I was invested in these characters and their stories, but at a certain point, the narrative tone changes and everything started to hit much harder, taking it from a 3 star to a 5 star read.

I'd recommend this to fans of (or as supplementary reading to) The Fruit of the Drunken Tree.

“What was it about this country that kept everyone hostage to its fantasy?”


Infinite Country shares much in common with two of other novels by Patricia Engel, The Veins of the Ocean and Vida. While I do enjoy certain aspects of her storytelling—which at times reminds me of authors such as Alice Hoffman and Isabel Allende—I do think that her work is much too heavy on the telling. As with The Veins of the Ocean, this latest novel is very light on dialogues and mostly relies on recounting the various histories of various characters. Still, interspersed in their experiences are some lovely descriptions and observations. I particularly liked the role that myths play in the narrative.

“When the world was new, the creatures that ruled were the jaguar, the snake, and the condor.”


I loved the first chapter, which mostly focused on Talia, the youngest child of Elena and Mauro. Although she was born in America she was raised by her father and maternal grandmother in Bogotá. After an act of violence she is sent to a correctional facility run by nuns in the mountains of Colombia. Talia, however, is determined to leave as she has a flight to the U.S. to catch. As Talia journeys across Colombia, hitching rides here and there, readers learn of her parents first meeting and subsequent relationship. The two lived for awhile with Elena's mother but after the birth of their first daughter they relocate to America. After they 'overstay' their tourist visa they are forced to accept unfair wages and live in precarious places. Throughout their relationship Mauro struggles with alcoholism and depression, which drives them apart.

“Emigration was a peeling away of the skin. An undoing. You wake each morning and forget where you are, who you are, and when the world outside shows you your reflection, it's ugly and distorted; you've become a scorned, unwanted creature.”


Similarly to The Veins of the Ocean and Vida this novel shows the hard choices immigrant parents have to make: to live in a country which deems them 'alien' and in perpetual fear of being deported, or to return to their home country, knowing that there they will face a different struggle.
In the last section of the novel the narrative includes chapters from the first point of view (until then the novel was told through a 3rd pov), specifically those of Talia's American-based siblings. These chapters did not add a lot to the narrative, and they didn't make these characters as fleshed out as Talia. Although Elena and Mauro's relationship and struggles are certainly poignant, that their stories were being 'recounted' in a rather passive way distanced me from them. The switch to a 1st person narration was somewhat jarring, and I did not care for the clichéd address to the reader (on the lines of: "You already know me. I'm the author of these pages").
The storyline would have benefited from focusing more on Talia. Although at first it seems to be hinted that she will play a big role in the story, she is pushed to the sidelines.
While I appreciated the message of this novel, I was not as taken by its execution. If you enjoyed Crooked Hallelujah or you happen to have loved Engel's previous work, you should definitely consider picking this one up.

“Leaving is a kind of death. You may find yourself with much less than you had before.”

What would you give up to give your children a better life? How do you choose between pieces of your family? What does it mean to carry the weight of someone else’s absence?

To say Patricia Engel wrote an immigration novel crystallizes the core of this book but it also deeply undersells it. This is an honest, unflinching portrait of how the immigration system is designed to destroy families and the difficult decisions and ramifications that accompany both staying and leaving one’s homeland. The family at the center of the narrative is of mixed status-undocumented parents with one child born in Colombia and two born in the U.S. This is an incredibly common condition in immigrant families and something that is inadequately addressed in the greater conversation. I think everyone who read and praised American Dirt needs to experience this novel as well, as there is a great deal more insight into this conversation that is stunningly portrayed in the prose.

Engel has elegantly, beautifully rendered the impact of these stresses on the different members of the family. Although it’s easy to want to scream at the characters for some of the choices they make, by the end you only want to see them all fulfilled, the harm plucked from their souls, and warmth put into their lives.

It also contains as many amazing insights into life, love, and the nature of humanity as are expected with any of Engel’s well-considered novels. For example, from the viewpoint of wife and mother, Elena:

“Only women knew the strength it took to love men through their evolution to who they thought they were supposed to be.”

Or this general observation:

“People say drugs and alcohol are the greatest and most persuasive narcotics-the elements most likely to ruin a life. They’re wrong. It’s love.”

Always one of my favorite aspects of Engel’s writing, these observations are just as vividly displayed in Infinite Country, perhaps even more so. This is a novel to fall in love with, to highlight, and keep quotations close to your heart. It is a story that will overwhelm you and an ending you’ll want to read over and over.

Very fast read about a family's immigration to the US from Colombia. The characters are not delved into as much as their circumstances. Chapters are written from various family members' point of views, and it is hard to follow as they each have different paths to and from the US. A lot of "he went there' and "she did this" and not much insight into the personalities or motivations behind the travels.