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Title: Ambivalent novel long on poetry, short on solutions
Review: Tedious novel in the form of nine linked stories shows Mexican life from multiple angles, none too flattering. The crystal frontier of the title is, of course, the U.S.-Mexican border; what matters here is less the border as geopolitical fact and more its impact on the Mexican psyche. The author aims his barbs at both sides of the border; there's little surprising here except perhaps for the portrayal of a disdainful Mexican upper class that couldn't care less about how the other half lives or whether it lives or starves. Book clubs will find this a useful tool for stirring up discussion on the illegal drug and immigration issues whether they read through to the end or not; those who do will be rewarded with a chapter written half in normal prose and half in surreal fragmentary lines of poetry, the effect of which is not unlike sitting through a Tarkovsky double-feature.
