SOURCE: “An Antidote for Women Who Get Bitten,” in Los Angeles Times Book Review, August 25, 1996, p. 8.

In the following review, Scofield offers a negative assessment of Loverboys, voicing her disappointment with the short and repetitive stories.

The most astonishing tale in Ana Castillo's new book, a collection of stories, is the last, called “By Way of Acknowledgment.” An itinerant writer, “scattered by the wind” that surrounds her fate, suddenly gets money out of nowhere, suddenly gets a contract for a book she hasn't yet written. She races back to “Chi-town,” where there are her comadres, with their faith and passion and generosity, with their space and discipline and vodka, to make it all happen. Her talent and luck and ethnicity pay off. She finishes her stories, calls the book Loverboys. Of course, this story is true.

I'm not from Chicago, and I'm not Latina and I don't have...