Gabino Iglesias' 'House of Bone and Rain' is a tale of vengeance in Puerto Rico

NPR's Book of the Day

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Arts, Books

4.2 • 672 Ratings

🗓️ 22 August 2024

⏱️ 8 minutes

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Summary

Bram Stoker Award-winning author, Gabino Iglesias, knows what it's like for grief and anger to turn deadly. That's what he explores in his new novel, House of Bone and Rain, which follows six close friends who vow to avenge the murder of one of their own mothers as a hurricane approaches. In today's episode, Iglesias, who's a frequent book critic for NPR, speaks with NPR's Ayesha Rascoe about what it's like to be part of a brotherhood so deep, you consider each other to be "ride or die" friends – but why maybe there really shouldn't be any need for the latter.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, it's NPR's book of the day. I'm Andrew Limbaugh. If you read book reviews on NPR, you've
0:07.3	probably come across Gabino Igles' byline. But he's got his own novels too. His latest
0:12.7	House of Bone and Rain is getting great reviews. The New York Times called it ferocious.
0:18.2	And judging from today's interview, it's easy to see why. It's about a group
0:22.3	of boys dealing with one of them losing their mother. And the book explores the duality of
0:28.1	this kind of friendship, how great it can be to have a crew of your boys there for you during the
0:33.6	toughest times of your life, and how it can also lead to some, let's call it,
0:38.7	poor decision-making.
0:40.8	Gabino talks to NPR's Aisha Roska about that and how a short story he wrote in middle school
0:46.1	led to his career as a horror writer.
0:49.4	That's ahead.
0:51.2	The opening chapter of Gabino Iglesias' new horror novel House of Bone and Rain isn't just fiction.
0:58.8	It's a story straight from the author's own life.
1:02.3	The latest work from the Brom Stoker Award winner is set in Puerto Rico,
1:07.2	where a close-knit group of friends are devastated when one of them loses his mother in a shooting.
1:12.6	In Iglesias' real-life experience, grief and anger sparked talk of revenge.
1:18.6	We swore. It's a young, dumb man who grew up watching Goodfellas.
1:23.6	So what are we going to do? We're going to get revenge.
1:26.6	But as the novel explores, there's a big difference between discussing revenge and actually going through with it.
1:33.3	I love my friends. I believe in that friendship that's so deep that you would take a bullet from someone.
1:38.8	But that's easy to say when no one has a gun in the room.
1:42.5	House of Bone and Rain is an exploration of what might have been with the men in the book following the darker path.
	...

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