Heartbreak Soup

"Heartbreak Soup shares the dreamlike sensuality of Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s stories, their soft contrasts, their intoxicating images. Hernandez introduces the Central American town of Palomar in “Sopa de Gran Pena.” There are four main storylines running through “Sopa,” marking their own courses and occasionally bumping into each other like billiard balls. The first concerns the plight of Chelo, the town’s bath-giver, whose clientele is usurped by a newcomer to the town, Luba (Gilbert’s earth-mother character and the central figure in his Palomar stories), here having only but begun her…