Sandoval, Victor M. Roll over, Big Toben

Kliatt, May, 2004 by Francisca Goldsmith

SANDOVAL, Victor M. Roll over, Big Toben. Arte Publico Press, Pinata Books (Univ. of Houston, 452 Cullen Performance Hall, Houston, TX 77204-2174; www.arte.uh.et/ pinata). 160p. c2003. 1-558-85401-0. $9.95. J

A bright and alluring cover opens onto a story that careens with the pacing and the high cliff-hanging-incidence rate offered by a television melodrama series, rather than a well-worked novel. David struggles to make sense of his barrio world, learning to evaluate friendship, family, and the promises of security afforded by gang life. As his story's narrator, David reports on his friend Robert, who struggles with his own family problems, on Toben, the neighborhood gangster, and on his own personal growth from follower to independent thinker. Along the way, the neighborhood is littered with fights, drinking, pigeons, and an apparent soundtrack the snatches of which are so small that 21st-century youth won't he able to place the lines into meaningful song lyrics. (The novel's title is a pun on Chuck Berry's nearly 50-year-old "Roll Over, Beethoven.")

David's emotional life is genuine and his perception of the adults in it credible. However, readers will be so busy recovering from one disaster and anticipating the next that it will take them several readings to feel that they have gotten to know a boy who may, indeed and in spite of differences in time and place, have hopes and anxieties in common with them. Francisca Goldsmith, Teen Svcs., Berkeley PL., Berkeley, CA