Other Evolutions
Unspoken rivalries lead to aching rifts in Rebecca Hirsch Garcia’s glittering debut novel Other Evolutions, about the power and pitfalls of intense family love.
Alma grew up in the glow of her older sister, Marnie, who possessed ascendant genius and beauty. But Alma’s adoration of Marnie was compromised by a betrayal in the elder’s freshman year of college. In one night, Alma lost her arm and the potential love of her life, Oliver, and her family lost its sense of balance.
In young adulthood, once agreeable Alma becomes sharp and change-resistant. She allows Constantine, Oliver’s roommate, to orbit her, but refuses to call what they have “love”; she revels in her close relationship with her mother, which Marnie—ill-attached to their dual Mexican and Jewish heritage—cannot hope to match. But the rhythms of her days are interrupted by a flurry of upheavals: her mother dies, is revived, and disappears to Mexico; Alma becomes sure that she saw Oliver on the street.
Alma is a maddening but magnetic heroine who is as sure of her own cynicism as she is always searching for magic. Her days are informed by her losses to the extent that she thrills in Oliver’s mother’s hatred of her and punishes her sister on repeat. Her occasional pettiness belies her depth, though: she is properly critical of human cruelty, and she recognizes when “the ephemeral nature of my anxieties clashed against brute reality and almost always lost.” Late in the novel, speculative, mournful storylines are introduced, reminiscent of L. M. Montgomery and Mary Shelley. They upend expectations and lead Alma, always searching for a sense of belonging and purpose, down an uncertain but hopeful path.
Existing at a rich multicultural crossroads, Other Evolutions is an enchanting, triumphant novel about grief, love, and forgiveness.
Reviewed by
Michelle Anne Schingler
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