Cry Watercolors
Carlos Alvarado
Llumina Stars
ISBN: 1933626119
Fiction, Contemporary
Reviewed by Lee Gooden

The novel Cry Watercolors is Carlos Alverado’s version of James Joyce’s novels, A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses. Mark Balcon, Alverado’s protagonist is similar to Joyce’s Stephen Dedulus. As a child, like Dedelus, Balcon questions what he feels is an unsavory taste of Catholic guilt.  Alverado writes, “Mark had grown up in an ethereal culture of Hispanic Catholicism, where sorrow, guilt, and prayer formed the cornerstone for primal absolution.  Through this spiritual purification, one gained God’s regard for the dispensation of judgment and granting of rewards...”

Both Dedulus and Balcon in their early years existed in a state of fear of sinning and prayed constantly for forgiveness and divine guidance.  Alverado writes, “As real as himself, the angels, stewards of the holy Catholic Doctrine, stood in judgment of his every thought and act.  Mark feared never doing right. While his family slept peacefully, he was often tormented with vivid imaginings of godly disapproval of his daily acts. At seven, supposedly too young to experience desperation, Mark challenged his confusion.  In the silence of his darkened room, he firmly held the point of a knife against his belly, pain turned to anger when he realized it was the promise of eternal reward that allowed God to hold sway over his life.  Without eternity, he reasoned, there would be no need for judgment, thus would be resolved his current agony.” After reaching his “blasphemous” conclusions, young Balcon learned his father had died in a car crash.  He blames himself and wallows through life in a self-made purgatory that follows him into adulthood and inhibits him, causing him to distance himself, never truly having emotional attachments.
Balcon turns into himself, his outlet, his pressure relief valve becomes writing.  His writing has a quality that allows him to become affluent according to societal standards. 

On the surface of his existence, he goes through the motions and he recognizes his own emotional limitations.  When a young lady named Emilia expresses her interest in him and announces her amorous intentions, he withdraws, runs away and hides.  And when he finally finds within himself the acceptance that he deserves and can return true love, he is informed that he has a terminal disease.  His confusion and frustration increases, he questions his worthiness as a human being and his worthiness as partner for Emilia.

Cry Watercolors is an excellent portrait of so-called blossoming unconditional love.  Alverado has written a great love story, a paean for anybody in awe of the romantic notion of people who are “meant to be”together.  Alverado has also provided the reader a peek inside the writer’s method of operation.  Averado’s experience as an Emergency Medical Physician has tempered and enhanced his insight and the lyrical beauty of his surgeon like skills with language.