"[Readers] luxuriate in prose that is as sudden as it is meditative. . . . [Before the End, After the Beginning] places Gilb's talent for rendering the mundane into myth on full display."—San Francisco Chronicle
"Gilb's voice has an authenticity that's unimpeachable."—San Antonio Express News
"“Stark, realistic, and told in mostly gritty matter-of-fact prose . . . Gilb portrays his characters simply and powerfully, without apology; even his unnamed characters represent the plight of not only every working-class Mexicano but Everyman.” —Boston Globe
"Dagoberto Gilb's mission in Before The End, After the Beginning is not to dazzle and amaze, but to implode myths and misconceptions, to expose us to forgotten and subterranean characters in constant transition and exile; characters inured to injury and pain, heartbreak and woe—yet who never jettison hope for a better life, nor a future uncertain, yet still very much possible. These Chicano dreamers are lovelorn and love-tossed, broken-yet-healing, but most of all, on the road to recovery from an America that shuts its eyes and ears at their very existence. Gilb shows us that every man, woman and child is a citizen of hope, succors the birthright of love and freedom in their hearts, and sin fronteras, can, and will, emerge victorious. Make no mistake about it, by the end of Before The End, After the Beginning, you will be dazzled. And amazed."—ZZ Packer
“The situations [in these stories] are part of the everyday, normal struggle to keep one's head above water and one's heart sane. Dagoberto Gilb writes about these matters in a mature and subtle manner.” —All Things Considered, NPR
“Don’t don’t dare put Gilb’s writing in any category. He’s as fine at the lyrical as he is at the vernacular. And his subject is as universal as it can get: the mystery of existence . . . Triumphantly, Gilb built this book. It’s masterful, bottom to top.” —Dallas Morning News
"Of their surfaces, these are quirky, confronting, intense, often darkly funny stories—worth it for that alone. But from underneath, Gilb unearths a sense of profound human longing and a dream of harmony which (the stories makes perfecly clear) could be reached no other way."—Richard Ford
"Poignant . . . [with] a keen perception of human nature . . . Gilb writes masterfully, displaying his talent for powerful storytelling. One thing is for certain and that is readers will absorb these characters and empathize and remember them.Before the End, After the Beginning is a short book but will leave an impression for a long time."—Zetta Brown, New York Journal of Books
"Demonstrates that the author has more power than ever in addressing the conditions and contradictions of being split across cultures, and reminds us that every American, native or immigrant, is the product of a society that must learn to share or risk losing its founding graces."—Publishers Weekly
“Where are we when we are before the end yet after the beginning? We are in the midst of life, where everything happens. Before the end and after the beginning, one celebrates a perfect sixth birthday, looks for a job, has an affair, remembers old girlfriends, suffers a stroke. These are the moments Dagoberto Gilb describes in his elegiac third story collection.” —New York Times Book Review
“[These stories] are about the real world, where things are complex and messy, where race and sex and age and social and economic status cannot be so cleanly disentangled from one another . . . Gilb’s characters are complex in real-to-life ways . . . [Before the End, After the Beginning] will stay with you long after you are done.” —Washington Independent Book Review
"The latest collection from the master storyteller . . . There is so much substance to Gilb's tales . . . The terrible things that befall a man are not always his fault, Gilb seems to say with these stories, but neither, alas, are the blessings: the children who play at your feet, that girl who accepts your kiss, and that land you return to before you die."—Texas Observer
"Like [Raymond] Carver, Gilb focuses his stories on working-class men who are slowly awakening to their ineptitude at relationships, who have a hard time shaking off old addictions, and who can’t quite move their careers out of neutral. What distinguishes Gilb is his deft handling of race: The heroes in these ten sharp stories are mostly Mexican-American men who weather plenty of prejudice. . . . Gilb gets excellent mileage from simple elements. Though the men in these stories have common concerns, each feels distinct and alive."—Kirkus Reviews
"[Gilb] is in fine form . . . He's simply telling good stories: of men who are both Mexican and American, who are cultured and uncouth, who look at wealth from the outside and, occasionally, from within. A student may make something of himself; a poor young father might fall through the cracks; an older man might discover something new. They are formed outside themselves, but they are no finished yet."—Los Angeles Times
“Gilb’s voice has an authenticity that is unimpeachable.” —San Antonio Express, Best books of 2011
"Written with compassion and grace . . . This is a collection that deserves conversation."—The Feminist Texican blog
PEN/Hemingway Award–winner Gilb’s 10 new tales, many written as the author recovered from a 2009 stroke, take on family ties, poverty, labor, and prejudice at the country’s borders, but defy racial and geographic boundaries even when they provide the principal conflict. In “Hacia Teotitlán,” a Mexican immigrant raised in L.A. struggles to resolve his dual identity; “Uncle Rock” finds an Americanized child trying to bond with his mother’s culturally naïve boyfriend. Financial divisions abound, as in “Willows Village,” where the shiftless Guillermo visits a wealthy relation, and the wonderful “Cheap,” the prescience of whose subjects—immigration policy and underpaid laborers—is rivaled only by the explicit address of Arizona’s immigration crackdown in “To Document.” And yet the most affecting story may be “please, thank you” for its depiction of a proud man recovering from a stroke and working his way back into language, as Gilb himself was forced to do. This new collection (after The Flowers) demonstrates that the author has more power than ever in addressing the conditions and contradictions of being split across cultures, and reminds us that every American, native or immigrant, is the product of a society that must learn to share or risk losing its founding graces. (Nov.)
The ten stories this collection comprises represent the latest output from an increasingly recognized Latino author. The most noteworthy piece by far is the first one, "please, thank you," written in lowercase because the narrator, suffering from the paralyzing effects of a stroke, cannot use the shift key. Writing while he was recovering from a stroke himself, Gilb here captures the frustration and helplessness of a patient capable of understanding but humiliated by his incapacitation. Except for "Uncle Rock" and "Willows Village," the remaining stories, which rely on the open if not ambiguous endings found in Gilb's earlier The Flowers, lack the vibrant originality of the opening story. Most of these stories fall into the category of narrative realism, drawing on the recognizable lives of working-class Latinos as well as the author's personal experience. VERDICT A heterogeneous assortment of true-to-life experiences focusing on Latinos in the American Southwest, but with enough relevance and literary merit to be of interest to the general public elsewhere, as well as to academia. [See Prepub Alert, 5/9/11.]—Lawrence Olszewski, OCLC Lib., OH
Men struggle with old demons, attractive women and a persistent racism in the latest collection from Gilb (The Flowers, 2008, etc). It's a cliché to compare a short-story writer with a clean-cut prose style to Raymond Carver. But Gilb's stories do recall the minimalist master, and not just because of their trim sentences (or because Gilb knew Carver). Like Carver, Gilb focuses his stories on working-class men who are slowly awakening to their ineptitude at relationships, who have a hard time shaking off old addictions, and who can't quite move their careers out of neutral. What distinguishes Gilb is his deft handling of race: The heroes in these 10 sharp stories are mostly Mexican-American men who weather plenty of prejudice. "Cheap" exemplifies Gilb's interests, centering on a talented but ailing musician who uncomfortably referees a rift between two Latino painters in his home and their bullying, sanctimonious gringo boss. Manliness is a consistent theme, most strongly in "The Last Time I Saw Junior," in which an old friend intrudes on the narrator by dragging him back into the world of macho drug dealers. Yet these men are easily undone by a provocative woman or two. In "Willows Village," the best story of the batch, a down-on-his-luck family man moves in with his aunt, whose wealth and attractiveness unsettle him; Gilb skillfully generates erotic tension without making the story comic or perverse, and the ending underscores the connections between greed and lust. Gilb suffered a stroke in 2009, and the collection's opener, "please, thank you," seems to address that event, recalling the narrator's recovery and firmly establishing the key elements of his stories: family, prejudice and what's required to overcome a sense of helplessness. Gilb gets excellent mileage from simple elements. Though the men in these stories have common concerns, each feels distinct and alive.
