Books: Mosquito

By Gayl Jones

Jones made her name in the 1970s with brutal tales of sexual abuse and violence. So when she came forth with last year's The Healing, a quiet, sweetly engaging novel that took a National Book Award nomination, readers found themselves surprised as much as delighted. Jones returns with the story of a black female truck driver in south Texas who winds up in an effort to harbor border crossers. Mosquito is a carnival of digression and free association, though, with the plot hijacked for paragraphs, if not pages, by muddled tangents. Questions of racial identity provide an interesting subtext to the...

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