As in Rita Indiana's debut novel, "Papi," it is a child's
voice--innocent, but with a certain sarcastic edge--that holds forth on
a range of topics in "Nombres y animales." The narrator discusses
animals, music, and television, as well as--more revealingly--family,
mothers and fathers, initiation, learning, and what may exist after
life. The everyday and the dream-like collide in this novel that
reverberates with echoes of the Caribbean and that describes what it
means to come of age in that region, what it means to be a woman in
Latin America, and what it means to write in the present day.