A superlative family saga that examines the concept of freedom in vividly dramatized personal and political terms, by a Puerto Rican novelist (The Youngest Doll, etc., not reviewed) whose smooth mastery of her ambitious materials is reminiscent of Gabriel Garc°a M†rquez at his very best. Wealthy importer Quintin Mendizabal discovers the manuscript of a novel his wife, Isabel Monfort, is writing about the histories of their entwined families. It's a chronicle of material enrichment and sexual exploitation, of familiar unhappiness and ethnic conflictin short, a microcosm of Puerto Rico's uncertain status throughout this century as an American commonwealth teetering uncertainly between the opposed poles of statehood and independence. As Quintin reads, he becomes increasingly disturbed to find, as he views things, that Isabel ``had made up incredible things about his family and left out much of what had really happened.'' He pens notes in the margins, questioning Isabel's conclusions and correcting her factual errors. Incredible events and brilliantly realized characters emerge from both their versionsincluding Quintin's father Buenaventura, a self-made man who may have colluded with the Germans during WW I; his maternal grandfather Aristides, a police chief whose dedication to the cause of statehood obliged him to murder his own people; and the Mendizabals' half-breed servant Petra, a rock indeed who outlasts several of their generations and lives to judge them all. The novel is a seamless web of plot, character, and haunting imagery (the lagoon on which the family's imposing mansion stands is itself dying, of industrial pollution). As the mingled love and hatred that bind Isabel and Quintin together rise to a painful crescendo, a plebiscite on the issue of statehood vs. independence reveals the flaws in the family's substructure, pitting parents against children, and provoking Isabel to take by force the independence she can never otherwise attain. Its triumphant conclusion seals their common fate and fulfills the aims of an overpowering novel that looks, at least on first reading, very like a masterpiece.
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-374-17311-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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