"One part Scheherazade, two parts Boccaccio, a twist of Bolaño, and a
dash of bitters. Blue Label is intoxicating, hilarious, and the best
novel on the calamity that is today's Venezuela."--Carmen Boullosa
This deftly and idiomatically translated novel . . . a quest of sorts,
as a high school student in Chávez's Venezuela tries to make sense of
love and life . . . packs a punch on many levels: personal, political,
and even mythic. --Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Eugenia Blanc, a young Caraqueñan and quintessential teenager at war
with the world around her, has one aim: after graduating from high
school, to abandon Venezuela definitively. She embarks on a spontaneous
road trip in a banged-up Fiat with her rebellious classmate Luis Tévez,
in search of her grandfather, the one person who can provide her with
the documents that would allow her to leave the country. While Eugenia
and Luis's tentative, troubled romance unfolds during the Chávez era,
the story also looks back at Venezuela's "lost decade" of the 1990s, a
time of intractable violence, inequality, corruption, and instability
that led to Chávez's election. With an unvarnished fluidity that brings
to mind Jack Kerouac and a crazy-ass playlist that ranges from REM to
Bob Dylan to El Canto del Loco to Shakira, Blue Label is an audacious,
dark novel with a gut-punch of an ending; the prize-winning first book
by a writer who has cemented his reputation as a major young Latin
American voice.
