“[A] beautifully crafted, poetic book.”
—New York Times Book Review
“Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer is so full of voice. It is utterly bright and original.”
— Tommy Orange, author of There There
“[A] masterly debut . . .Though the novel brims with spellbinding prose, magical elements, and wounded, full hearted characters that nearly jump off the page, its most remarkable feature is perhaps its piercing critique of the white Anglo tourists’ tendency to romanticize people of color, as well as Figueroa’s examination of the traumatic effect this attitude can have on those who are deemed “the Other.” This cleverly constructed and deeply moving account enthralls.”
— Publisher’s Weekly, starred and boxed review
“Curious and dazzling . . . Figueroa’s omniscient, second person narration creates an intimacy while the hypnotic rhythm of her prose and evocative mystical elements invoke an archetypal sense that is at once out-of-time and thoroughly contemporary as we grudgingly recognize our own precarious epoch.”
— Booklist (starred review)
“Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer combines folklore with magical realism in a manner reminiscent of Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Along with ghosts who appear as recurring characters, the prose is cut with imagery and metaphor in rhythmic patterns, adding another otherworldly element to the story . . . Figueroa addresses important issues, including depression, suicide and personal and generational loss, with nuanced insight. She also skewers the tendency of white Americans to exoticize people with darker skin, portraying the impact of this prejudice in a deeply stirring manner. A lyrical contemplation of how we can never run away from our past, Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer is an exquisitely woven story about resilience and trauma.”
—BookPage
“Gorgeously rendered, with familial and ancestral history braided into contemporary events, this study of memory and grief features a young woman trying to pull her brother back from the edge after their mother’s death.”
—Library Journal
“A magical realist take on loss, this beautifully written novel occurs over the course of a single weekend and tracks a brother and sister as they process the loss of their mother with, perhaps, a visit from an angel.”
—Zibby Owens for Good Morning America Reading List
“Jamie Figueroa‘s debut book, Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer, is a story filled with trauma and about breaking cycles. It’s about a family in a small Southwestern town where nothing seemed to go right for generations. While reading the trauma and difficult decisions these siblings make can be hard to digest, it’s one of the most beautifully written and important books to come out in 2021.”
—Debutiful
“Jamie Figueroa‘s Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer is an exquisite debut, filled with rich imagery and lyrical prose. Figueroa packs plenty into the novel’s modest page count, with characters both tangible and all-but magical bursting off the page . . . Brimming with elegant, poetic writing, Figueroa has offered us a truly original debut. An absolute must read.”
—The AU Review
“Figueroa has a way with words. The prose is poetic, unique and engrossing . . . and oftentimes as magical as the story itself.”
—The Brooklyn Rail
“One of a number of excellent debut novels already out in the still-new year, this is a singular work. Taking on the coming-of-age from young adulthood into something deeper and more mature, the story follows a sister and brother as they reckon with their mother’s passing and begin to understand what life should and should not be as it gets lived. Their tourist town of Ciudad de Tres Hermanas gives us not only a vivid picture of the present but casts a knowing eye on the layers of the past. Beautifully done.”
—Rick Simonson, The Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle, WA
“Despite heavy themes of grief, suicide, rape, and the trauma of racism, the book employs a playful omniscient narration, a delicate sleight of hand that Figueroa considers ‘the voice of the roots, the rocks, of the soil of this place that has recorded all time, that will scold and comfort, at times simultaneously.’ Its effect becomes apparent in an early scene with Rufina and Rafa panhandling the tourists who expect to be enchanted by the alpine setting’s indigenous people. On Rafa: ‘To look at him, you wouldn’t know all the countries he’s traveled to during the past nine years, the whole of his twenties’ . . . There’s a subtlety to the work, which achieves great power.”
— The Millions
“When a brother and sister spend their last weekend in their family home after their mother has passed, they make a bet that will prove life-changing in this unique and haunting debut.”
— Ms.
“In the tourist town of Ciudad de Tres Hermanas, in the aftermath of their mother’s passing, two siblings spend a final weekend together in their childhood home. Seeing her brother, Rafa, careening toward a place of no return, Rufina devises a bet: if they can make enough money performing for privileged tourists in the plaza over the course of the weekend to afford a plane ticket out, Rafa must commit to living. If not, Rufina will make her peace with Rafa’s own plan for the future, however terrifying it may be. As the siblings reckon with generational and ancestral trauma, set against the indignities of present-day prejudice, other strange hauntings begin to stalk these pages: their mother’s ghost kicks her heels against the walls; Rufina’s vanished child creeps into her arms at night; and above all this, watching over the siblings, a genderless, flea-bitten angel remains hell-bent on saving what can be saved.”
— The Rumpus
“This debut has been pitched as a cross between Jesymn Ward and Tommy Orange. While some comparisons are a stretch, this book is actually a perfect blend of those two authors. In style and content, Figueroa manages to capture what makes those authors shine. She invites readers into a family where a sister is doing everything in her power to keep her brother from destructing. Figueroa’s prose is soft yet completely powerful. As the family course corrects spinning out of control after the mother dies, readers will feel their pain on every page.”
—Debutiful
“Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer is a haunting of a novel centered around the hustle of an utterly unforgettable brother and sister. Jamie Figueroa’s faultless language surprises, enchants, and does nothing less than articulate that which is unseen and eaten by profound grief. Supervised by a wild, booted angel (a character for the ages), this marvel of a first novel seems powered by a force that wrecks itself and is made glorious, again and again, until its stunning conclusion. Singular, devastating, and divine.”
— Marie-Helene Bertino, author of Parakeet
“In language that is blade-sharp and sun-bright, Jamie Figueroa weaves a story of generations of love and loss that is powerful and aching and utterly new. Brother, Sister, Mother, Explorer will never, ever leave me.”
— Ramona Ausubel, author of Sons and Daughters of Ease and
Plenty
“Figueroa’s writing is decadent. Sentences in this book require the reader to breath and sigh with the revelation of their beauty; others slap you in the face with their sharp assumptiveness. The book begins in prayer, and does what prayer does–gives us hope, reveals our deepest griefs, and
sometimes even redeems.”
— Tiphanie Yanique, author of Land of Love and Drowning