These lives, gently told, have currents within them as wide and deep as an ocean’s—and no one can miss their primal force.
In her restless and vibrant fourth novel, Alvarez (Yo!, 1997, etc.) turns to the historical figures of Salomé Ureña, former national poet of the Dominican Republic, and her daughter, Camila, a professor in the US, chronicling each woman’s lifelong struggle to define la patria and her obligation to it.
Starting near the end of Camila's life and the beginning of Salomé's, alternating chapters move through time in opposite directions to form a rich narrative tapestry. From an early age, poetry and politics are Salomé's crucible, and in the 1870s she becomes the voice of a people longing for independence from dictators and colonizers. A younger and especially ardent admirer wins her heart, but marriage to Pancho takes Salomé from her muse, as their children and a commitment to establishing a liberal school for girls consume her while the political situation goes from bad to worse. When Pancho begins a second family in Paris, where he’s gone to obtain advanced medical training, the strain on Salomé takes a serious toll on her health, and she contracts tuberculosis. Camila, who lost her mother when she was three, is first viewed retiring from Vassar in 1960 in order to go help the revolution in Cuba, where she grew up with her stepfamily. Camila’s struggle has been different: after confronting a crisis in her sexual identity and facing down American xenophobia as a college student during WWI, she must come to terms with Salomé's complex legacy of love and liberation while pursuing an academic career. But in the end Camila finds her own place and her own homeland, where she can carry on her mother's work.
These lives, gently told, have currents within them as wide and deep as an ocean’s—and no one can miss their primal force.Pub Date: June 9, 2000
ISBN: 1-56512-276-3
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Algonquin
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2000
A story both little and large and one that pulls out all the Irish stops.
The heart-expanding extremes of life—first love and last rites—are experienced by an unsettled young Dubliner spending one exceptional spring in a small Irish village.
Christy McMahon “walked this line between the comic and the poignant,” and so does Williams (History of the Rain, 2014, etc.) in his latest novel, another long, affectionate, meandering story, this one devoted to the small rural community of Faha, which is about to change forever with the coming of electricity to the parish. Delighting in the eccentricities of speech, behavior, and attitude of the local characters, Williams spins a tale of life lessons and loves new and old, as observed from the perspective of Noel Crowe, 17 when the book’s events take place, some six decades older as he narrates them. Noel’s home is in Dublin, where he was training to become a Catholic priest, but he's lost his faith and retreated to the home of his grandparents Doady and Ganga in Faha. Easter is coming, and the weather—normally infinite varieties of rain—turns sunny as electrical workers cover the countryside, erecting poles and connecting wires. Christy, a member of the electrical workforce, comes to lodge alongside Noel in Doady and Ganga's garret but has another motive: He’s here to find and seek forgiveness from the woman he abandoned at the altar 50 years earlier. While tracing this quest, Williams sets Noel on his own love trajectory as he falls first for one, then all of the daughters of the local doctor. These interactions are framed against a portrait of village life—the church, the Gaelic football, the music, the alcohol—and its personalities. Warm and whimsical, sometimes sorrowful, but always expressed in curlicues of Irish lyricism, this charming book makes varied use of its electrical metaphor, not least to express the flickering pulse of humanity.
A story both little and large and one that pulls out all the Irish stops.Pub Date: Dec. 3, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-63557-420-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Bloomsbury
Review Posted Online: Sept. 14, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2019
A subtle, mature reflection on the loop of life from a unique writer of deserved international stature.
When the four adult Madigan children come home for Christmas to visit their widowed mother for the last time before the family house is sold, a familiar landscape of tensions is renewed and reordered.
Newly chosen as Ireland’s first fiction laureate, Enright (The Forgotten Waltz, 2012, etc.) showcases the unostentatious skill that underpins her success and popularity in this latest story of place and connection, set in an unnamed community in County Clare. Rosaleen Considine married beneath her when she took the hand of Pat Madigan decades ago. Their four children are now middle-aged, and only one of them, Constance, stayed local, marrying into the McGrath family, which has benefited comfortably from the nation’s financial boom. Returning to the fold are Dan, originally destined for the priesthood, now living in Toronto, gay and “a raging blank of a human being”; Emmet, the international charity worker struggling with attachment; and Hanna, the disappointed actress with a drinking problem. This is prime Enright territory, the fertile soil of home and history, cash and clan; or, in the case of the Madigan reunion, “all the things that were unsayable: failure, money, sex and drink.” Long introductions to the principal characters precede the theatrical format of the reunion, allowing Enright plenty of space to convey her brilliant ear for dialogue, her soft wit, and piercing, poetic sense of life’s larger abstractions. Like Enright's Man Booker Prize–winning The Gathering (2007), this novel traces experience across generations although, despite a brief crisis, this is a less dramatic story, while abidingly generous and humane.
A subtle, mature reflection on the loop of life from a unique writer of deserved international stature.Pub Date: May 4, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-393-24821-0
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 16, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2015
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