Author: Carlos Fuentes. New York. 1978. Dutton. Perhaps Fuentes' most controlled stylistic achievement, this novel is indeed a stunning combination of the cosmopolitan present and the mythological past, the two extended metaphors in the work being Circe and the cinema - the goddess who turns men into swine and the medium that turns reality into celluloid. Before he metaphorically turns into a dog, the protagonist, a young Mexican man, spends all of his time and energy trying to achieve a greater intimacy with his mother, who, in turn, avoids him as zealously as he pursues her. The son is something of a Wildean dandy, living in an Art Nouveau grotto where he has enshrined his mama and her films. The mother is a Mexican movie star, as brash and flamboyant as they come, who is always being photographed or filmed - turned into celluloid. But just as the mother becomes increasingly transformed into a ‘goddess' by the film industry, so does she, knowingly or not, change her son into an acolyte of her own unreal personality and finally into a living fetish. Fuentes delicately shifts from voice to voice, from time to time and from Medusa to Mexico City with such grace and lyricism that even his most radical transitions in time or image blend effortlessly into this, a most beautiful and bizarre fiction.