Philoctète’s work is not an easy read; although dense with footnotes, for those unfamiliar with the history of the Dominican...
A haunting, if unsatisfying, novel of the 1937 massacre of Haitians living on the Dominican border.
In 1930, dictator Rafael Trujillo Molina took control of the Dominican Republic, a regime that would last until his assassination in 1961. Although Trujillo was of mixed race, he was said to consider blacks inferior, and was rumored to wear face powder in order to lighten his complexion. Philoctète’s novel centers on this flawed man and his anger over the “Haitian invasion” (not only for the increasing rates of intermarriage but also the effects of Haitians entering the Dominican workforce). In October 1937, Trujillo ordered his army to kill all Haitians in the border region, using their machetes so as to make the massacre appear the action of furious campesinos. Before the 17,000 Haitian men, women and children—many of whom had been born in the Dominican Republic—were slaughtered, they were asked to pronounce the word “parsley.” If they could enunciate correctly, their lives would be spared. At the core of Philoctète’s story are Pedro Alvarez Brito, a mixed-race Dominican, and his Haitian wife, Adèle Benjamin. As Pedro leaves for his shift at the sugar factory, an army truck filled with soldiers roars by. In a dreamlike sequence, Adèle, hanging up the wash, is commanded to say the word, which apparently kills her. Was it the utterance that caused her death? Or was her throat cut as part of Operation Cabezas Haitianas? Pedro returns home to see his wife sprawled in the dirt; she is alive but has lost her mind. Will this couple, a humble symbol of the land, survive?
Philoctète’s work is not an easy read; although dense with footnotes, for those unfamiliar with the history of the Dominican Republic, the story will remain somewhat opaque.Pub Date: Nov. 30, 2005
ISBN: 0-8112-1585-7
Page Count: 160
Publisher: New Directions
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2005
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose...
Sparks (The Longest Ride, 2013, etc.) serves up another heaping helping of sentimental Southern bodice-rippage.
Gone are the blondes of yore, but otherwise the Sparks-ian formula is the same: a decent fellow from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches falls in love with a decent girl from a good family who’s gone through some rough patches—and is still suffering the consequences. The guy is innately intelligent but too quick to throw a punch, the girl beautiful and scary smart. If you hold a fatalistic worldview, then you’ll know that a love between them can end only in tears. If you hold a Sparks-ian one, then true love will prevail, though not without a fight. Voilà: plug in the character names, and off the story goes. In this case, Colin Hancock is the misunderstood lad who’s decided to reform his hard-knuckle ways but just can’t keep himself from connecting fist to face from time to time. Maria Sanchez is the dedicated lawyer in harm’s way—and not just because her boss is a masher. Simple enough. All Colin has to do is punch the partner’s lights out: “The sexual harassment was bad enough, but Ken was a bully as well, and Colin knew from his own experience that people like that didn’t stop abusing their power unless someone made them. Or put the fear of God into them.” No? No, because bound up in Maria’s story, wrinkled with the doings of an equally comely sister, there’s a stalker and a closet full of skeletons. Add Colin’s back story, and there’s a perfect couple in need of constant therapy, as well as a menacing cop. Get Colin and Maria to smooching, and the plot thickens as the storylines entangle. Forget about love—can they survive the evil that awaits them out in the kudzu-choked woods?
More of the same: Sparks has his recipe, and not a bit of it is missing here. It’s the literary equivalent of high fructose corn syrup, stickily sweet but irresistible.Pub Date: Oct. 13, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-4555-2061-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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