Perfect timing for a Scheherazade-style account of Cuban history.
One woman's story of brutality, courage, tragedy, and love gets a roomful of Cuban refugees through a hurricane.
As Hurricane Flora approaches Cuba in 1963, 82-year-old María Sirena Alonso refuses to evacuate with her neighbors; she is seriously ill and does not want to be saved. But once the storm arrives, a soldier shows up at her door to load her on a bus bound for a shelter. Though she takes nothing with her except a small framed photograph of a little boy, she needs nothing more because her whole life is in her head: "I have a perfect memory. I remember nearly everything I've ever read or heard." Once installed in a room at the erstwhile governor's mansion with a group of women who will ride out the storm together—including an ex-friend whose dead son used to be married to her daughter—María Sirena begins to tell the story of her life, beginning with her birth to Cuban parents on a Spanish ship at the end of the 19th century. Her rebel father is jailed as soon as they reach shore; her resourceful, beautiful mother, Lulu, finds protection for herself and her daughter with another man. When Agustín rejoins them, they are swept into the war against the Spanish. Acevedo's third novel (A Falling Star, 2014, etc.) mingles the recounting of María Sirena's epic family saga, which ends with a heartbreaking confession, with scenes among the women at the mansion. One woman decides to make a break for it: "It is Noraida, swimming in the debris-filled water, her brightly dyed hair like streamers in her wake. We watch as she pushes aside a plastic cup, a sheet of plywood, an umbrella floating upside down and bobbing along." Such irresistible moments of rebellion and bravery define this tale.
Perfect timing for a Scheherazade-style account of Cuban history.Pub Date: April 7, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-60945-252-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Europa Editions
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
APPRECIATIONS
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