Goodlife Mojo

THE FATHER. Pastor Pagán knows how to wink. He's a professional at winking. For him, winking an eye — just one — is a way to be courteous. All the people he deals with conclude their business with a wink. The bank manager when he approves a loan. The teller when he cashes a check. The administrator when he hands it to him. The cashier when he plays the fool and doesn't inspect it. The chief's assistant when he tells him to go to the bank. The porter. The chauffeur. The gardener. The maid. Everybody winks at him. Headlights on cars wink, traffic lights, lightning in the sky, grass in the ground, eagles in the air, not to mention the planes that fly over the house of Pastor Pagán and his family the whole blessed day. The feline purr of the engines is interrupted only by the winking of the traffic on Avenida Revolución. Pastor responds to them with his own wink, moved by the certainty that this is dictated by good manners. Now that he's on a pension, he thinks of himself a...

HAPPY FAMILIES Stories By Carlos Fuentes. Translated by Edith Grossman Did Tolstoy really believe the throw-down challenge with which he began “Anna Karenina”? Are happy families really all alike? Is every unhappy family unhappy in its own way?Carlos Fuentes’s new story collection not only takes its title and epigraph from Tolstoy’s famous opening, but also makes us reconsider the bold statement the Russian writer uses to draw us into his novel. It’s true that the households at the center of these 16 stories could hardly be gloomier or, on the surface, more dissimilar, as each labors under its own burden of tragedy and grief. Yet as we read through this offering from one of Mexico’s most celebrated literary figures, the author of more than 20 books, certain patterns emerge, likenesses suggesting that the wildly dysfunctional may share more in common than do their harmonious neighbors. Children repeat and compound the mistakes that have ruined their parents’ lives; loving marriages devo...