THE COLUMBUS TREE

by Peter S. Feibleman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 1, 1972

Forgetting about his earlier, more ""literary"" beginnings, Feibleman has written a preeminently popular novel -- as readable as they come, and go -- lulled along in the warmth of the sirocco. Feibleman's story of Spain in the '50's is terraced from the ancestral palace, with its Columbus tree, of a Count Guzman down to the very poor fisherfolk in the little Spanish seacoast town in Cadiz. Thus you have the Count, representative not only of the old nobility but also of the residual hope of freedom -- he's been instituting cooperatives in the province and he's under surveillance by the police (a detective stationed on his rooftop). Also you have Pepe Luis who joined the Communist Party, is beaten up and eventually smuggled out by the Count after he murders the spy; Alice Little-john, a wealthy American girl very much in love with him; Helen, her (young) mother, whose cloisonne beauty is just beginning to crack; Will, her brother, seeing too much too soon, etc., etc. When the Columbus tree is taken down to a stump (you can just about hear the symbol clashing) it takes the aspirations of all of these participants with them. Somewhere en route during this long novel, the Count comments that Americans, in particular, bring their own romanticism to Spain; Mr. Feibleman has endowed it with just that along with a dusty nostalgia for what once was or what might have been.

Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1972

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Atheneum

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1972

Categories: FICTION