The Jaguar Mask by Michael J. DeLuca
Published by Stelliform Press on August 1st, 2024
DeLuca's debut novel, 348-page paperback
Adult (violence, death)
Read on without fear of spoilers! Also note that I received an advance review copy for free, and I am leaving this review voluntarily. I thank the author, publisher, and BookSirens for the opportunity.
My second experience with a book published at Stelliform and my mind is blown again.
Knowing that Michael J. DeLuca is the publisher of the magazine, Reckoning, I had high expectations for this debut novel and was happy to discover a story even better than expected. I am definitely going to read it a second time. Rich, immersive writing is rich, full of detailed, meaningful descriptions, and yet it doesn’t get bogged down. The flow of the story pulled me along nonstop. I had to force myself to slow down to try to check more details about the story vocabulary and location, as I have not traveled to Guatemala City or Central America and know extraordinarily little about it, but I ended up saving further research for a second read. There are so many details about tradition, culture, religion, politics, wildlife, the land; it would’ve been overwhelming if the characters and story itself didn’t have such a deep hold on me while reading.
I highly recommend everyone to experience The Jaguar Mask, especially anyone interested in animals, artists, shapechangers, crime, politics, protest, mythology and religion, Central America. The story is wrapped around a number of elements that pull it forward to its intense ending. Two protagonists lead the story: Cristina, a local painter with visions and a busy family life, plus Felipe, an unlicensed taxi driver who is also a jaguar shapechanger grappling with his identity. Other elements include life with the taxi driver’s roommates (Luz and her trans girlfriend Anibal), the political movement they’re involved in, a morally questionable detective’s investigation into murder and corruption, the death of Cristina’s mother, plus plenty more about hope, despair, survival, and various considerations of the specific struggles and history of Central America.
The treatment of the trans character felt authentic, though that is in no way the focus of this book. Regardless, I loved Anibal and Luz so much. Such positive forces. In fact, the treatment of relationships felt really authentic throughout. In a similar vein, the treatment of the political movement felt authentic as well. It was shown to be a positive force overall, but the author wasn’t afraid to portray some less positive elements to it, such as moments of doubt and feelings of futility.
The use of masks was brilliant. Felipe reveals a large number of masks, and each one had a very particular personality and background attached, as well as shifting Felipe’s perspective on the world. How they connect to Felipe is explored more and more as the story progresses. The idea of masks, of how we present ourselves, is also explored among other people and groups, not just for this character’s supernatural or magical realist engagement with them. For example, how masks are used by local gangs and police officers to take control. Or how masks are used by citizens for survival.
I was highlighting passages constantly as I read. I've included a selection of quotes that illustrate what I loved about the language without any spoilers.
Regarding Felipe’s struggle with identity and masks:
[…] which gave his reflection coily hair, a complexion a different shade of Brown, and a clear hint of Garífuna ancestry in the high brow and narrow jaw. As with the conquistador, but in inverse, the caiman mask seemed to cause people either to afford him a little more respect or to let their eyes slide right past him as if he wasn’t there — unsettled by otherness? He had a skull mask, but he never wore it; death had meant something different to his ancestors. El Bufo was used to the conquistador mask; today, the conquistador it would be. The rest went in their shoebox into the hollow place under his seat.
Felipe reflecting on the masks of other people:
The woman walking in the lead looked like she’d lived through the civil war and the revolution. A few steps behind her, a man with a crutch wore the right leg of his pants pinned shut above the knee. His cragged face expressed such eloquent sorrow it could only mean he used it to earn his living. Felipe knew that mask: his father wore it every day.
Cristina grapples with facets of her work as a painter:
For the first months the rush of freedom was overwhelming; for awhile it was enough. She’d indulge a whim, get off the bus at the crossroads above the lake and get on a different bus just to see where it went. She drank pineapple and banana smoothies and ate pupusas in central parks in twenty different highland towns before they began to run together like diluted paint. In every one, she painted an oversaturated landscape tastefully unpopulated with flowering vines and faceless women. Once in awhile she made something of her own just to know she could still do it. Three months after Miguel Ángel was born, when Teresa left for good, Cristina dug out the five or six finished paintings that were hers. She lined them up on her rack at the artisans’ market on a Sunday after church let out, then sat with Diego watching people pass, betting in whispers on who was only cutting through to the food stalls seeking Mama’s chicken, who was rushing to beat the rest of the post-church traffic to the Ninth Ave valet lots, who were foreigners lost and terrified. Her art made people stop; that much could be said for it. It scared them, she thought. Even some who weren’t already scared. They tried to understand what they were seeing. Then, coming to no immediate conclusion, they shook themselves like dogs coming out of the rain and went on.
Brief example of the city description as described by Felipe:
[…] jagged archway cut into a chain-link fence feathered in windblown plastic, a dust path beaten harder than concrete zigzagged a drunken seam down into a shanty city that seemed more the work of ants than people. Music thundered distant here as everywhere — heavy bass of the kind his hips were incapable of resisting even now. And the river thundered, gorged with toxic trash but hungry, arms of mist reaching into hollows as if seeking the tenacious root that, dislodged, would bring the whole precarious thing collapsing down. The wind smelled of chiltepes and fermented urine.
With that, I’ll wrap up by saying the ways in which the characters struggle and stumble towards the powerful ending of this novel is very compelling. Left me gaping and sitting in that moment filled with energy and hope and joy that such transformation could be possible for these characters I fell in love with. And hope that somehow a people could overcome the corruption and sickness that drags their communities into darkness.
Now I need to do research into everything I was just exposed to. Enjoy the read!
Links
Michael J. DeLuca's website: https://mossyskull.com/
Buy the book: https://www.stelliform.press/index.php/product/the-jaguar-mask-by-michael-j-deluca/
Goodreads review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/6721767031
