IRACEMA

Name: IRACEMA
Author: José de Alencar
ISBN: 0-19-511547-3

by José de Alencar & edited by Naomi Lindstrom & Alcides Villaca & translated by Clifford E. Landers ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 2000

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Iracema ($25.00; Jan.; 160 pp.; 0-19-511547-3): This addition to Oxford’s invaluable Library of Latin America (see also Blest Gana and de Almeida, above and below) is a new translation of a classic Brazilian novel first published in 1865. In depicting the defiant love affair between young Indian woman Iracema (the letters of whose name, rearranged, spell —America—) and a Portuguese soldier (Martim), de Alencar constructs an allegory of native Brazil’s subjugation by colonialist Europe, which, amazingly enough, views both cultures with roughly equal amounts of irony and compassion. Floridly romantic and undeniably dated, but, still, a seminal and important work. It isn—t seamless, but there’s a greatness in it.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2000

ISBN: 0-19-511547-3

Page Count: 160

Publisher: Oxford Univ.

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 1999

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

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THE WALL

by Marlen Haushofer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 1991

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Originally published in German in 1962 and touted more recently as a feminist's Robinson Crusoe, this somber classic from prize-winner Haushofer chronicles the experiences of a (nameless) woman cut off from her familiar city ways in a remote hunting lodge, after Armageddon has snuffed out all life in the world beyond. With the woman's diary of activities during the first two years of isolation as foundation, the story assumes the shape and flavor of a journal. Saved from instant death by a transparent, apparently indestructible wall enclosing a substantial area of forest and alpine meadow, the woman finds relief from her isolation in companionship offered by a dog, a cat, kittens, and a cow and her calf, making them into a family that she cares for faithfully and frets over incessantly with each season's new challenges. Crops of potatoes, beans, and hay are harvested in sufficient quantity to keep all alive, with deer providing occasional meat for the table, but the satisfaction of having survived long winters and a halcyon summer is undone by a second sudden and equally devastating catastrophe, which triggers the need in her to tell her story. Although heavy with the repetition of daily chores, the account is also intensely introspective, probing as deeply into the psyche of the woman as it does into her world, which circumstances have placed in a new light. Subtly surreal, by turns claustrophobic and exhilarating, fixated with almost religious fervor on banal detail, this is a disturbing yet rewarding tale in which survival and femininity are strikingly merged. Not for macho readers.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1991

ISBN: 0-939416-53-0

Page Count: 244

Publisher: Cleis

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1991

Categories:

GENERAL FICTION

- BOOK REVIEW
THE WALL
by Marlen Haushofer ; translated by Shaun Whiteside

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CARAMELO

by Sandra Cisneros ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 30, 2002

Readers here get both: “Life was cruel. And hilarious all at once.”

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A sprawling family saga with a zesty Mexican-American accent from Cisneros, author of, most recently, Woman Hollering Creek (1991).

Every summer, all three Reyes brothers drive with their wives and children from Chicago to Mexico City to visit their parents. Narrator Lala begins with a particularly dreadful trip during which “the Awful Grandmother” reveals a shameful secret from her favorite son’s past to humiliate her detested daughter-in-law. These are Lala’s parents, and Lala then rolls the narrative back, goaded by a scolding second voice whose identity we learn later, to tell us how a desolate, abandoned girl named Soledad became the Awful Grandmother. Soledad comes from a family of shawl-makers, and her most significant possession is a rebozo caramelo, a silk shawl whose striped design, when she unfurls it after her husband’s death, evokes “the past . . . the days to come. All swirling together like the stripes.” Wearing it years later to her parents’ 30th anniversary, Lala brings the fringe to her lips and tastes “cooked pumpkin familiar and comforting and good, reminding me I’m connected to so many people, so many.” Cisneros’ keen eye enlivens descriptions of everything from Chicago’s famed Maxwell Street flea market to Soledad’s sun-stroked house on Destiny Street. (The author riffs playfully throughout on the double meaning of destino, as either “destiny” or “destination”; it’s hard to imagine that the simultaneous Spanish-language edition will be as stylistically original as this casually bilingual text.) Melodrama abounds, and the narrator doesn’t disdain her tale’s links to Mexico’s famed telenovelas. In one of many entertaining footnotes, vehicles for historical and biographical background as well as the author’s opinions, she insists that those TV soap operas merely “[emulat] Mexican life.” The only way to cope is with a robust sense of humor. As Lala’s friend Viva says, “You’re the author of the telenovela of your life. Comedy or tragedy? Choose.”

Readers here get both: “Life was cruel. And hilarious all at once.”