Liars of Mariposa Island
By Jennifer Mathieu
This book wasn't originally on my to-read list, but after hearing a highschool librarian give a book talk, I took it home and finished it in one night. As it is set in the 1960s and the 1980s it would be considered historical fiction.
The Liars of Mariposa Island tackles difficult family dynamics. It is told from the perspective of a mother, daughter, and son. You see the mom, Caridad's journey from Havana, Cuba to rural America during the Cuban Revolution. You see how the mother's struggles are passed onto her two children and how they deal with it differently. The characters in the book are very well written. The mother is fairy tale villain level bad news. The kids are flawed but in a sympathetic way.
The meaning of the title comes to you slowly. Lies start out small, a fib to mom about babysitting hours and a funny game creating fantastical stories to explain scars. Through the course of the book you see more and more how lying drives the story. While I come from a family of fibbers and over embellishers, nothing tops the Finney family of this book. More than once I gasped at the unraveling of lies deeply held. Seeing the mother's backstory, I wanted to be sympathetic but really struggled to forgive her passing on her trauma on to her children.
This is an excellent summer read. You have the imagery of a Texas beach town to put you in the summer mood. Fair warning though, Caridad might make you want to throw the book at a wall a time or two.
Mathieu, J. (2020). The Liars of Mariposa Island. Faber and Farber.
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