AUTHOR: Betina González
PUBLISHER: Tusquets Editores, S.A.
GENRE: Contemporary, Mystery
READER’S NAME: James Lyons

America Alucinada, Hallucinating America, takes place in an unnamed American city where strange events are afoot. Vik, an aging immigrant discovers that an uninvited guest has taken up residence inside a closet in his home. Young adults, disillusioned with modern technology, pollution and overpopulation, have left the city to live in the woods and organize an ecological revolution. Finally, because of the strange and aggressive behavior exhibited by the area deer population, Beryl, an ex-hippie, organizes a club of older people to hunt and kill them. 

These three plot lines, the intruder at Vik’s house, the “misfits” living in the woods and the older people’s deer hunting club slowly converge until they collide in a surprising and unpredictable climax. 

The atmosphere of the novel is vaguely dystopian. There are fleeting references to hurricane refugees overrunning areas of the country, presumably due to climate change and local deer acting strangely to the point of killing a man. Vik, who is a darker-skinned person with an accent, is initially so afraid of what he sees as a brutal police force that he would rather live with an intruder in his home than risk a dangerous encounter with prejudiced police. There are also the adults abandoning their lives and children in the city in order to forsake modern life and an abandoned child in fear of being sent to a work farm. 

The narration is omniscient except for Beryl’s story, which is told in first person. There are several themes running through the narrative. One is that of alienation. The hippies who lived together at the commune in a big house in the sixties were fleeing a conformist and bellicose society. The misfits in the woods are also alienated but are fleeing thoughtless, wasteful consumerism which they see as destroying the earth. They have come together in order to live in a new way and struggle against the old order through ecological revolution, but we see that although supposedly anarchist in nature, the revolutionaries are expected to bow to the will of their leader. 
The theme of the generation gap is also present. When old Vik and the young intruder, the woman living in his closet, have a conversation they cannot comprehend each other. Vik is a taxidermist at the museum living an ordinary life, which his uninvited guest disdains. In her view he is a conformist, living a wasteful lifestyle. Vik cannot comprehend her bohemian way of life. Also, there is Berenice, the little girl left behind by one of the misfits, Emma Lynn, who makes a desperate and initially fruitless attempt to find a parent to avoid being sent to a work farm. The older ex-hippies from the commune at the house and the misfits in the woods do not seem to understand each other either.

This novel resembles other literary works that deal with alienation and rebellion against an oppressive and unjust society. Huxley’s Brave New World comes to mind, in which a non-conformist challenges a totalitarian society, which goes to great lengths to keep its population under control. In the novel the protagonist, like the ex-hippies and misfits, takes advantage of an opportunity to experience a natural lifestyle beyond the reach of the government, which changes his life. 

It is impressive that the Argentine author had the courage to choose a city in the U.S. as a setting and write about all American characters. Her experience living, studying and working in the U.S. undoubtedly helped her to create authentically American characters. The authenticity of the prose is reminiscent of another South American writer who successfully took on an American theme with American characters, Isabel Allende in “The Infinite Plan”. 

The familiarity with the setting, authenticity of the characters and the tension created as the characters’ stories are slowly revealed, leaving the reader wanting to know more, as well as the ever-present nostalgia for the idealism of the sixties, will be attractive to American readers. 

Betina González, who is from Buenos Aires, earned a master’s degree from the University of Texas El Paso in Creative Writing and a Doctorate from the University of Pittsburgh in Latin American literature. Her experience in the United States is manifest in the creation of a believable American setting populated by authentic American characters. As in America Alucinada, themes in her other works Lesser Art and The Possessed are those of mystery and rebellion. 

America Alucinada presents a compelling mystery in a novel and interesting way that American readers will enjoy. It is also written in a manner that an American audience will find familiar, believable and comprehensible.