Pedro & Daniel

Gr 7 Up–Erebia’s debut novel is “fiction based on [his] memorable relationship with Daniel, [his] brother,” his introduction reveals, which also warns of the “many forms of abuse depicted in these stories.” Daniel died at 30 in 1993: “To remember is to live again.” Veteran Spanish-fluent narrators Corzo and Pabon cipher the five parts. Corzo is the aching voice of Part One, when the brothers are tiny children surviving the senseless onslaughts of their brutal mother. Erebia explains his third-person narration here—emulating the distanced perspectives of those who knew yet never intervened. Pabon commands the book’s majority, in which Erebia adopts first-person, reflecting the brothers’ asserting their voices. Pabon, alas, is surprisingly disappointing in distinguishing the pair, except in the final chapters when adult Daniel sounds more caricatured than convincing.