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'Swift as Desire' by Laura Esquivel

Message resonates, but creativity leaves a little to be desired

Sunday, October 14, 2001

By By Sharon Dilworth, fiction writer who teaches English at Carnegie Mellon University

	Swift as Desire By Laura Esquivel Crown $22.00

The novel’s strength was grounded in the way the plot focused on women’s sexual desires and the original way in which she celebrated these desires.

Esquivel’s fourth novel doesn’t have the wild scope of her first. It lacks the inventiveness of situation and character that so filled “Chocolate,” but it tells a sweet story of lost love and lessons learned.

The slim narrative skims over many years, introducing many characters, much too quickly and none too thoroughly. The novel feels as if it’s rushing to get to its message: the importance of communication in sustaining love.

The central character is Jublio, the seventh child of poor parents who is born “happy and on a holiday.” Jublio is a sweet boy who supposedly brings joy to everyone he meets, though this aspect of his personality is never fully explored.

He is considered a blessing to the family because of his rare gift of being able to read people’s hearts and to get them to communicate with one another. One of his first acts of understanding is to translate away the problems between his bickering Spanish-speaking mother and his Mayan-speaking grandmother.

Though fluent in both languages, Jublio mistranslates their words just enough so that the other will forgive and perhaps understand the other. This experience shows him the power of words, and he decides to use his gift to become a telegraph operator.

The novel is loaded with cliches -- lofty commentaries on love and life that are never exactly woven into the fabric of the narrative. They stand out because they don’t belong to any of the characters in the context of their story lines.

For example, we learn, “The discordance between desires and words causes all kinds of communication problems and gives rise to a double standard both in individuals and in nations who say one thing yet do another.”

Or, “Love is a verb. One demonstrates one’s love through ones actions. And a person can only feel loved when someone else shows their love with kisses, hugs, caresses and gifts.”

Or even worse, “There are so many sayings that ring so tremendously true and yet their full meaning isn’t really felt until one experiences them firsthand. I have often repeated the saying ‘you never know what you’ve got till it’s gone’ ... etc.”

Esquivel’s talent as a writer is lost at these moments. She’s much better at presenting characters, especially strong-willed characters whose determination to follow their desires make them blind to anything else.

There are moments of that here in the novel, especially in the sections narrated by Jublio’s daughter, Lluvia. She is desperate to learn the reason for her parents’ separation. Her struggle to know why they no longer speak demonstrates a fine understanding of how she figures into their worlds:

“Mysteriously my mother’s words, instead of grounding me by their friction, can sometimes produce electric shocks in my brain. I must find the material that can truly ground her words, because otherwise I can never leave her house unharmed. But now I really need to get back to my father. By contrast, his words are pure alchemy to me. They have the prodigious quality of transforming darkness into light: just like electricity.”

Despite the rushed narrative and lack of character development, the end of the novel is filled with loss and regret. The message, though somewhat sentimental, is a call to ‘‘live life to its fullest,’’ and it works to underline the importance of communication, especially between people whose love for one another should allow them to speak clearly even when their words may cause the other pain.