FerrÇ's second novel in English, and first since her NBA- nominated The House by the Lagoon (1995), creates a colorful family saga as a way to explore the modern political and social history of her native Puerto Rico. The narrator, Elvira Vernet, claims descent from two prominent families whose divergent natures effectively embody contrary strains in the national character. Elvira's mother, Clarissa Rivas de Santillana, grew up among a privileged family made wealthy by its several sugar plantations and given to a dreamlike, contemplative ``faith in inspiration, the importance of aesthetic experience, and love of nature.'' FerrÇ skillfully traces the consequences of the Santillanas' passivity throughout three generations, focusing on the educational and marital experiences of Clarissa and her four sisters (``the five Ledas of Mount Olympus''), all named after their studious mother's favorite literary heroines. The best of their several stories include the continuing romantic misadventures of ``Tia LakhmÇ'' and the betrayal of the devotion to poetry of ``Tia Dido'' (when her literary hero Juan Ramon Jimenez comes to lunch, and the scales fall from Dido's eyes forever). As the five daughters attend the university and their circle of acquaintances widens, the family is gradually drawn toward modern industrialism, leftist politics, the US, and the seeds of their ruin. By contrast, the family of Elvira's father, the Vernets, are dominated by patriarch Santiago (``Chaquito'') and his four sons: bluff, extroverted careerists whose commercial ice-plant and cement factory prosper, placing them in the forefront of Puerto Rico's struggles for independence, though nothing can save them from a destiny of violent conflict, infidelity, and suicide. Moving like a firestorm, the novel throws off subsidiary characters and subplots with too-often confusing and occasionally reckless abandon. It's difficult to absorb all the particulars of FerrÇ's crowded narrative, and to distinguish among her many characters and their convoluted relationships. Still, one admires FerrÇ's ferocious ingenuity and energy as she depicts a society and century in flux. This most demanding of her novels so far is probably also the best.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-374-14638-1
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
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