Julianne Pachico Books In Order
Book links take you to Amazon. As an Amazon Associate I earn money from qualifying purchases.Publication Order of Standalone Novels
The Lucky Ones | (2017) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
The Anthill | (2020) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Jungle House | (2023) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas
The Tourists | (2014) | Description / Buy at Amazon |
Julianne Pachico is a British author of literary fiction novels that is best known for her debut novel “The Lucky Ones” published in 2017. She was born in Cambridge England in 1985 though she lived for most of her childhood in Cali. Her parents lived in Colombia where they were working as agricultural social scientists in international development. In 2004, she had graduated with a degree in Comparative Literature from Reed College in Portland Oregon where she had moved as a young teen. In 2012, she was back home in England and attended the University of East Anglia for her masters in Prose Fiction since she had won the Creative Writing International Scholarship by UEA. She would later earn her doctorate in critical and Creative writing from the same university. Her short story made the Sunday Time Prize long list while she made history as the only author to get two of her stories published in the Best British Short Stories anthology in 2015. Her short fiction has been published by Lighthouse, The White Review, Granta, and The New Yorker and been broadcast on BBC Radio 4. She has both British and American citizenship. She has taught Creative Writing at the UK’s Sheffield Hallam University and at the University of East Anglia where she also presented at a Prose Fiction workshop.
Julianne moved to the US from Colombia as an eighteen-year-old. She was moving to the United States to go to college and several years later while doing her masters in creative writing in England, she started writing her collection. The writing period was one of the longest periods when she did not visit Colombia, something that she had done at least once every year while living in the States. However, she would often just slip back into it whenever she decided to go back looking for stories. After all, she had spent much of her childhood there. Nonetheless, much of her novels have been written while she was in the United Kingdom and the United States. She believes that writing from abroad offered the perspective and distance she needed to craft a more balanced story. Julianne has said that writing about Colombia has changed the way she thinks about the country though it will always feel like home. However, she has no plans of ever making permanent residency in the country ever again.
In writing her debut novel “The Lucky Ones,” Julianne has asserted that she was trying to showcase the different facets of the place she called home. For instance, she acknowledges that most people think of drugs whenever Colombia is mentioned. As such, when she set out to write her novels, she had to have someone that was living in Europe and taking drugs given that the most known export of Colombia is Cocaine. She wanted to write a story about what it is like to live in a camp and the jungle as she follows the life and times of guerilla insurgents. It is also a narrative of every day rural living which in some parts of Colombia is significantly impacted by violence from paramilitary forces. Pachico had linked connection from the very beginning as she believed that her type of audience loved to read such novels. As such, her works have taken on a linked collection format. She never considered turning The Lucky Ones into a conventional novel given that the interconnected format felt much more appropriate for her Colombian stories. Julianne also found writing short stores less scary than penning a novel. It allowed her to explore different voices and perspectives from piece to piece as compared to the novel form in which the author has to be focused.
“The Lucky Ones” by Julianne Pachico is a novel set around the mountains in Cali where a teen has been left all alone for the first time. The house help mysteriously disappeared, the phone was cut and just as she listens to news of an insurgency, there is a knock at the door. Her teacher recites the classics from the likes of Shakespeare to a class of stones, leaves, and sticks in the jungle even as his kidnappers watch him closely. Another of her classmates that left Colombia to go have fun in the nightlife in New York still cannot forget the life she left in her home county as she still carries several bags of powder everywhere, she goes. The narrative takes place over twenty years and presents a setting where the villains are indistinguishable from the heroes. It is a world where loved ones can go missing never to be found and the truth is elusive. It is the story of several characters that recede and emerge and touch each other’s lives in a variety of ways. It showcases the intensity of life in Colombia as drug traffickers, guerillas and paramilitaries destroy the country.
Julianne Pachico’s “The Anthill” opens to the lead going back to the country where she spent much of her childhood. As a young adult, she was sent to England leaving behind Colombia, a place she had called home for years. It is now two decades since the death of her mother and she wants to know more about Colombia and her parent. Matty her childhood protector and friend is one person she had always longed to reunite even though he is now a grown-up running a daycare center that caters to Medellin’s street kids. She became a volunteer at the center but she finds that things are very different in Medellin which is now selling itself as a tourist destination. Their friendship is also no longer the same as Matty is now very guarded and he is not interested in reliving what she thought was a beautiful shared past. As she begins to confront Colombia’s traumatic history and memories, bizarre things start happening at The Anthill. There are mysterious sightings of a dirty small boy with crooked teeth, the children are painting disturbing drawings, and there is strange scratching on the doors. Could it be visions of something sinister or the boy that she once knew? It is a wild blend of razor-sharp sarcasm and social horror that explores redemption, racism, and privilege in the age of Instagram.
Julianne Pachico’s “The Tourists” opens to a party on the outskirts of Cali, Colombia. It is a very lavish party as it is being hosted by a local dignitary who intends to vie for office. He had watched carefully as his staff had prepared the house and the grounds to the taste he wanted to portray. Everything from the lawn furniture to the lawns had been well arranged while the caviar and oysters had been placed on the plates with precision. As his guests begin to arrive everything is ready but a sense of unease takes over the festivities as the sun goes down. The man’s daughter has gone missing and there is the threat of chaos from a resident spider monkey. Behind the scenes, the host is oblivious to the fact that his every move is being watched.
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