“¡Caramba! is about six characters in search of a volcano. It’s ‘Thelma and Louise’ on the border. And Nina Marie Martínez really knows her stuff: zanier than a telenovela, funnier than a Mexican-cowboy western.” —Sandra Cisneros, author of The House on Mango Street, and Caramelo

Combining Spanish with English, slang with doctrine, and curses with songs of love, Nina Marie Martínez has invented a new language with which to write a book unlike any other. By turns an old-fashioned adventure story, a soap opera, a tale of borders and homelands, a pop-cultural satire, a spiritual guide, and a chronicle of coming-of-age, ¡Caramba! combines legend, biography, anecdote, humor, romance and reportage—all rolled into one.


“Exuberant . . . Martínez has great fun juggling her soap-operatic narratives . . . [and] alights with glee on the point where English and Spanish collide to become Spanglish . . . The characters’ occasional pangs of homesickness for Mexico add a melancholy touch to the proceedings, as does a recurrent theme–that ‘nothin good ever happens in limbo’ . . . [A] sweet and bawdy dream of a novel.” —Michael Upchurch, Seattle Times

“Hilarious . . . In Lava Landing, the imaginary California town of Nina Marie Martínez’ first novel, eruptions–volcanic and otherwise–promise the constant transformation of landscapes and individuals . . . Women’s fun and friendship is of highest importance in the Mexican working-class world that Martínez renders. [She] works a special sort of magic . . . ¡Caramba! celebrates the humanity and grace of Mexican and woman-centered conviviality . . . With its Mexican vernacular feminism and carnivalesque gusto, ¡Caramba! creates humor out of what Martínez convinces us are the all too serious matters of language, authenticity, and folk wisdom . . . [Martínez] assert[s] a new Latina feminist cultural presence.” —Edith M. Vásquez, The Women’s Review of Books

“With its glossy retro cover, floral endpapers, maps, drawings, hand-scrawled letters, multicolored pages and other graphic flourishes, ¡Caramba! [is] striking . . . so endlessly inventive, and full of such oddball humor that it remains compelling throughout. Martínez lets her characters loose in Lava Landing, a fictional California town on the Mexican border, in which Spanish and English merge, and the boundaries between the fantastic and the real aren’t entirely clear either . . . ¡Caramba! has no shortage of delightfully unexpected elements of humor . . . [and] Natalie and Consuelo’s relationship conveys genuine intimacy, particularly in their unique brand of shorthand-speak. When Martínez is funny, she is very, very funny. Her deadpan perspective on faith, romance and the uneasy bonds of family is truly wonderful.” —Carmela Ciuraru, Washington Post Book World

“[A] sexy-silly Spanglish soap opera that zooms with the energy and unpredictability of a Tom Robbins tale hybridized with an Isabelle Allende plot. First kisses and last dances, tequila shots and lottery tickets, dormant volcanoes and a Mexican road trip to appease the Spirits of the Dead: Martínez’s crackling story brings readers to the border town of Lava Landing, California where the residents include . . . the wild duo of Natalie and Consuelo, two young, flirtatious girls who work at the Big Cheese Factory and raise hell in the tradition of Thelma & Louise . . . The story is enlivened with loads of artwork and illustrations, many in the style of traditional Mexican Lotería cards . . . A visual as well as a literary feast.” —Bellingham Weekly

“Half artifact and half book, this novel pulls us along into the wacky world of Lava Landing, California . . . Sporting colored pages, diagrams, pictures, drawings, maps, handwritten letters and replicas of Mexican lotería cards, [¡Caramba!] is evidence of the story it relates: this book is a road trip in itself . . . Each of the characters has a hurdle to overcome or a goal to achieve. And as we follow them around their various pursuits—from saving souls to settling down to creating the perfect hair treatment—this carnival ride of a story goes down like a cool glass of lemonade spiked with a shot of tequila. After you’re done you’ll be refreshed, happy and slightly loopy.” —Vivian Lake, Puerto Rico Sun

“¡Caramba! is set in the fictional town of Lava Landing, California—a hamlet this side of the border that seems knocked off the map by the idiosyncratic lives of its idiosyncratic residents . . . The eccentric exploits of colorful characters, a touch of the ethereal, and Martínez’s deadpan narration announce her debt to magical realism [but it’s] a Californian spin on the genre. Martínez crafts scenes with a compression of meaning that achieves the comic while approaching the poetic . . . If Lava Landing reminds readers of Macondo, the setting of Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, it’s because Martínez writes comfortably in Márquez’s wake . . . Readers can revel.” —Farid Martuk, Austin American- Statesman

“A dark-eyed babe with dangling earrings and perky pigtails dominates the cover of Nina Marie Martínez’s debut novel, ¡Caramba! . . . You could imagine coming across this eyeful of mexicano kitsch tacked to your auto mechanic’s wall, but you don’t expect to see it on the cover of a book published by the venerable literary house Knopf. Caramba indeed. Open the book. More surprises. Paper in various colors . . . And each chapter introduced by a hand-colored woodblock image from the deck of cards used in La Lotería, a bingolike game popular in Mexico . . . Begin reading. More surprises. Spanish expressions pepper the English text. There’s not one main character but six, including a born-again Christian mariachi who falls in love with a female ex-con, and a transsexual hairdresser named TrueDee . . . A spirited and comic tale.” —Fritz Lanham, Houston Chronicle

“¡Caramba! powers up the prose with a look that’s exciting and really, really fun. What’s more, the book itself is a hoot and a half . . . [that] starts with a murder and concludes with an earthquake. The novel is a sort of slippery-stream combination of humor and hallucination, neither of which is common enough in the literary landscape . . . A book that’s fun, full of interesting meta-fictional illustrative touches and best of all, undeniably weird. This is, of course, the highest recommendation that I can give it.” —Agony Column Review

“A smart, antic, sexy and funny frolic. Martínez both celebrates and pokes fun at Mexican traditions (including the Bingo-like game Lotería, the source of the novel’s lively illustrations) as she asks what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman and considers how we cope with loneliness, make the transition from romance to love, and age with grace.” —Booklist

“[An] effervescent, luminous debut. Although the novel has a slew of protagonists, readers first meet Natalie and Consuelo (Nat and Sway), two firecrackers with an ‘ever growing fascination with the wideness of the world’ . . . Martínez, in a bubbly mix of English and Spanglish, draws on magical realism, kitschy humor and tongue-in-cheek clichés . . . but there’s truth behind the zany humor….serious truth telling about love and happiness in life and death.” —Publishers Weekly

“[These] Mexican-Americans in a southern California town enjoy the hell out of pretty much everything in a slangy, self-assured debut. Best girlfriends Natalie Stevens and Consuelo ‘Sway’ Gonzales Contreras, a couple of cuties in their 20s are at the heart of things in this confection, but they share the stage with a fairly large cast of ghosts, whores, evangelical mariachi musicians, day laborers, transvestites, and a volcano as an eventful summer elapses . . . Everybody dances when there’s a little bit of time, and there’s always something interesting to eat . . . A great deal of fun. Chica-lit to be savored.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Essential . . . a manic first novel . . . imbued with magical realism, about the wacky goings-on in small Lava Landing, CA . . . a great read.” —Library Journal

“¡Caramba! is a jubilant celebration of story, language, and the fabulous in the familiar. Martínez weaves a vibrant magic around divine women and men striving for divinity.” —Katherine Dunn, author of Geek Love

“Magical realism meets la cultura de K-Mart in Nina Marie Martínez’s lively, beautifully observed ¡Caramba! The tone of a Tom Robbins book, fueled with a chicks-rule sensibility…Natalie and Consuelo are more fun than a barrel of axolotls.” —John Sayles, author of Los Gusanos and director of Casa de los Babys

“A triumph of whimsy and imagination—Monty Python meets One Hundred Years of Solitude . . . By the time [¡Caramba!] had caught me up in its cross-cultural delights, I knew exactly what Martínez’s editor was thinking: ‘Wow! This is something absolutely and authentically new! This author is going to be a star’ . . . .[A] raucous romp through small-town life in the utterly made-up border town of Lava Landing, California. Like Henry James in his late period, Martínez writes in a language that is only nominally the English of everyday life . . . a mock heroic and often deliciously funny Spanglish that comes to dominate more and more as the book capers on to its end . . . One of the book’s shadier characters [has] all the lustiness of a south-of-the-border Molly Bloom . . . Natalie and Consuelo speak with a diction that Mark Twain might have used for Huck Finn if there’d been a sequel that took place in Mexico . . . We know we’re in the presence of someone having a blast with what she’s writing. Martínez’s creations [have] considerable charm.” —Barbara Quick, San Francisco Chronicle

“Riotous . . . [Tells of] a fictional California town, where the women’s lives are as unpredictable as the nearby volcano.” —Latina

“Extremely colorful and dynamic characters . . . [Don Pancho’s] story reminds me of García Márquez’s short stories and the continuous development of the magical realism movement . . . A composite of funny and very creative stories . . . entertaining.” —Lucybeth Nieves, Candela

“Ay, ay, ay. ¡Caramba! . . . is as mesmerizing as acrobats in Cirque du Soleil and as rich as a double-fudge chocolate cake . . . Riotously funny . . . Were it not that Lava Landing is fictional, it’d be a town to visit. More interesting still is how the story is told. Subtitled “A Tale Told in Turns of the Card,” Martínez unfolds her novel as a game of lotería, a popular bingo-like game with numbered cards . . . The colorful ¡Caramba! is actually a voyage of discovery for the folks in Lava Landing . . . The term magic realism is often used to describe Latin American novels, but ¡Caramba! could better be described as magical. In the Lava Landing of quirky characters, K-marts and decades-old Cadillacs also resides a spiritual reality so much a part of Mexican tradition . . . The ending is a blast . . . Quite a trip.” —Marta Barber, Miami Herald

“It wouldn’t be hyperbole to state that ¡Caramba! may be the most entertaining, hilarious and thoroughly enjoyable reading experience many folks will have this year . . . Take one part Gabriel García Márquez, one part John Irving and one part Tom Robbins, cram into a blender, set it all on puree, and the resultant mixture might turn out to be a book approximating what debut novelist Nina Marie Martínez has created with ¡Caramba! . . . A wild, wonderful, comedic tale of female empowerment and road trips in which nearly everyone takes it on the lam at some point . . . Martínez writes like a veteran novelist: confident of her characters, certain of her direction, watching over all with the omniscient voice of a born storyteller. Her playfulness with language (mixing Spanish and English words and punctuation) betokens a joy of her craft found only in the best sort of writers . . . ¡Caramba! is like a literary burrito: each new layer reveals a tasty surprise.” —Dorman T. Shindler, St. Petersburg Times

“I am jealous and delighted all at the same time . . .¡Caramba! challenges readers to discern that [its] words and images have very sophisticated relationships with one another . . . The visual artifacts’ true beauty is that they are as much a part of the larger story as the narrative . . . Other than being a beautiful book to look at—it has 83 color illustrations in text—¡Caramba! is a beautiful book to interact with, getting us to connect with the symbols that often feed our cultural and artistic experiences. I suspect that my jealousy is quickly dissipating into admiration because Martínez is a very clever writer/artist. . . . Don’t miss out on this book!” —Patricia Trujillo, San Antonio Express News

“[A] lighthearted homegirl epic . . . Crammed with bright Lotería cards, maps, and letters, the volume bursts with color and high spirits.” —Entertainment Weekly

“[¡Caramba!] is a wild ride of a novel that will remind many readers—with its rash of characters caught in high drama—of the oh-so-popular telenovela dramas on Spanish-language television . . . Pure adrenaline and lots of fun.” —Chris Watson, Santa Cruz Sentinel

“[An] absurdly entertaining first novel . . . In ¡Caramba!, English and Spanish have an altogether delightful tendency to meld into each other, making Martínez, perhaps, the premier literary artist of an emerging tongue that can only be called Spanglish . . . ¡Caramba! is subtitled ‘A Tale Told in Turns of the Card’ . . . [which is] an apt narrative gambit, as Martínez’s tale unfolds with the skewed logic of a game of cards and is itself punctuated with striking imagery. In addition to the Lotería cards, there are grocery lists, classified ads, Mexican-theme clip art, tourist brochures and maps, the coded entries of a local jukebox, and a page torn from a wildlife guide . . . [With a] born-again mariachi and his witchcraft-practicing mother, a vixen recently jailed for her involvement in moving tamales stuffed with mala hierba, a beautician who’s part mamacita, part papacito, and a volcano that could blow at any moment, ¡Caramba! is a dizzying Mexican hat dance propelled by a soundtrack of norteño and Connie Francis, a Sternean shaggy perro story that makes Lava Landing both an up-to-the-minute Peyton Place and a post-Proposition 209 Mocambo.” —Mark Rozzo, Los Angeles Times

“Dreams—both the day kind and the night kind—are at the center of ¡Caramba! A wild book . . . and it’s funny, too. . . Martínez has a unique writing style; when you’re reading the conversations between characters, you’ll feel almost as if you’re eavesdropping . . . Give this book a grito. ¡Caramba! is muy bueno.” —Terri Schlichenmeyer, Savannah Morning News (also in the following Texas publications: Brownsville Herald, Alice Echo News Journal, and Kerrville Daily Times)

 
Nina Marie Martinez has a Bachelor's Degree in Literature from the University of California at Santa Cruz. She was born in San José, California, and currently resides in Santa Cruz, California with her daughter and dog.