REVIEW:

For a book with “infinite” in the title, Infinite Country sure is a small book. Literally, the hardback is about the size of a trade paperback. It’s hard to tell when browsing online, but in person oh it’s so little! It’s not dense either. At 191 pages, this is a tale that moves at a very fast clip. Hate slow burns? Then you’ll love the pace of this novel.

The length of Infinite Country is both its strength and its weakness. It’s possible to read it in a sitting or two, which allows the story of this separated 21st century Colombian family to unfold with an uninterrupted urgency like you’d get watching a movie. But because you spend such a short amount of time with the characters, it’s hard to get too attached.

The themes of immigration and deportation are so relevant and important though that it’s well worth the read to feel empathy for those struggling to make a life beyond the circumstances of their birth locale. Be warned however that a short read doesn’t mean an easy one. Trigger warnings for racism, sexual assault, and animal cruelty. (While the scene is brief, the torture and murder of a cat is the catalyst of the plot.)

Infinite Country was the Reese’s Book Club selection for March 2021. I read this because Reese told me to, and I’m glad I did.

PUBLISHER SYNOPSIS:

For readers of Valeria Luiselli and Edwidge Danticat, an urgent and lyrical novel about a Colombian family fractured by deportation, offering an intimate perspective on an experience that so many have endured—and are enduring right now.

At the dawn of the new millennium, Colombia is a country devastated by half a century of violence. Elena and Mauro are teenagers when they meet, their blooming love an antidote to the mounting brutality of life in Bogotá. Once their first daughter is born, and facing grim economic prospects, they set their sights on the United States.

They travel to Houston and send wages back to Elena’s mother, all the while weighing whether to risk overstaying their tourist visas or to return to Bogotá. As their family expands, and they move again and again, their decision to ignore their exit dates plunges the young family into the precariousness of undocumented status, the threat of discovery menacing a life already strained. When Mauro is deported, Elena, now tasked with caring for their three small children, makes a difficult choice that will ease her burdens but splinter the family even further.

Award-winning, internationally acclaimed author Patricia Engel, herself the daughter of Colombian immigrants and a dual citizen, gives voice to Mauro and Elena, as well as their children, Karina, Nando, and Talia—each one navigating a divided existence, weighing their allegiance to the past, the future, to one another, and to themselves. Rich with Bogotá urban life, steeped in Andean myth, and tense with the daily reality for the undocumented in America, Infinite Country is the story of two countries and one mixed-status family—for whom every triumph is stitched with regret and every dream pursued bears the weight of a dream deferred.