A TRUE STORY BASED ON LIES

An overwrought and overwritten account of a doomed Mexican household, by poet, biographer, and novelist Clement (Widow Basquiat, not reviewed).

Leonora is one of seven illegitimate children raised by a poor but independent woman in the Mexican hinterland. Used to hard work at an early age, she is sent off to migrant farmer camps while still a child, but eventually she’s placed in the care of nuns at a convent school some distance from her native village. There, she’s decently educated and trained in household skills, and the sisters find her a position as nanny in the home of a well-to-do family in Mexico City. Mr. O’Conner, the master of the house, is a descendant of Irish immigrants who settled in Mexico in the 19th century. A lawyer who represents wealthy clients, some of them quite dubious, he is known to have a mistress. His wife Lourdes is a pious society lady, devoted to her two sons and involved in charity work. Leonora isn’t in the household long before O’Conner seduces her. She soon finds herself pregnant, and O’Connor’s wife convinces her to remain in their employ and allow her and her husband to adopt the child. She does both, but it becomes increasingly difficult for her to stand by and see her own daughter raised by others. She tries to run away but is dissuaded by the other servants, who warn her that the child is registered as the O’Conners’ daughter now and that taking her away would be a form of kidnapping. The situation isn’t much easier for Mrs. O’Conner, who falls into a deep depression at the daily reminder of her husband’s infidelity and becomes harder and harder to live with. Eventually, both Leonora and Lourdes solve their respective difficulties by taking the only honorable way out.

Severely overdone: A True Story . . . ends up seeming little different from cheap romance with a highfalutin’ narration.