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now_booking's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
This is a multigenerational or maybe inter generational family history of the Marte family over 3 generations…. Set around middle Marte sister and dreamer of death’s, Flor’s, sudden desire to have a living wake, this is a story of mothers and daughters, sisters and aunties and the complex and essential nature of those relationships across a life span.
I overall liked this- it’s very much in the mysticism / literary fiction lane, whether with Flor’s ability to predict deaths in her dreams, or Pastora’s ear for discerning the truth, or Camilla’s ability to heal with herbs, or Matilde’s gift of embodying music, or whether it’s having evil aunt’s possessed or a daughter (Ona) with her pride in her “alpha” genitalia, this recollection of the Marte women’s history and collective experience across generations reads almost as a memoir and provides proud insights into Dominican culture and heritage.
I’m typically not a fan of novels where the timelines jump about but here Ona, the main narrator, an anthropologist documenting her family history, manages to make this not so jarring and few seem less. The Martes feel real- perhaps because this is not a memoir of one person but rather of the women in the family, the stories stop and start naturally. These are not women with “and then…” stories that build to some unattainable finale. These are snippets of memory and anecdotes like we all have, like we’re familiar with from grandmothers, mothers and aunts. They’re pockets of stories that help you understand the characters and guess how they came to be in their current state, but they feel like memories and character development rather than full on plot. That’s not to say that this book has no plot, it’s clearly a story of how a family faces their mortality and their heritage at an inflection point of the potential impending death of a matriarch.
For me, this ultimately felt like a story about love- the difficulty and misunderstandings and errors in demonstrating love between mothers and daughters but also around romantic love and heartbreak and the hope of healing. I overall enjoyed this. I perhaps wish there had been a bit more story about characters I cared about like Yadi and Ant… or perhaps Ona and Jeremiah. Perhaps I wished for a bit more comfort of the pastoral bits of happiness. I think I understand what the author wanted to do with this book but at the same time felt that by spreading the storytelling net so wide and not getting very deep, the book did not resonate as much. The writing was of course solid, the scenarios super relatable or otherwise empathy-provoking. You can’t read this without feeling something. And yet, it didn’t feel complete or as whole… perhaps the characters felt a little shortchanged… but perhaps that’s also intentional by the author…you never know anything about anyone and perhaps by approaching this book in this way, we are left with the same gaps in knowledge and questions and curiousities that exist in our own family lore.
Graphic: Child abuse, Death, Emotional abuse, Infertility, Infidelity, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Toxic relationship, Grief, Death of parent, Toxic friendship, and Abandonment
Moderate: Addiction, Alcoholism, Body shaming, Sexual assault, and Sexual harassment
Minor: Child death, Homophobia, Racism, Vomit, and Classism
atamano's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Graphic: Infidelity, Misogyny, and Sexism
Moderate: Alcoholism, Death, Emotional abuse, Racism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Grief, Death of parent, Pregnancy, Abandonment, and Classism
Minor: Infertility, Forced institutionalization, Blood, and Injury/Injury detail
celery's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
Graphic: Ableism, Addiction, Alcoholism, Animal death, Body shaming, Child abuse, Child death, Confinement, Cursing, Death, Domestic abuse, Drug use, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Gore, Gun violence, Hate crime, Incest, Infertility, Infidelity, Mental illness, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Panic attacks/disorders, Physical abuse, Racism, Sexism, Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Toxic relationship, Violence, Blood, Excrement, Vomit, Medical content, Grief, Medical trauma, Stalking, Car accident, Death of parent, Murder, Pregnancy, Gaslighting, Toxic friendship, Abandonment, Alcohol, Sexual harassment, Colonisation, Injury/Injury detail, Classism, and Deportation
victoriousbookworm's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
5.0
Graphic: Death and Grief
Moderate: Racism
Minor: Sexual assault
greenlivingaudioworm's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
3.5
Moderate: Death, Infertility, Infidelity, Racism, Sexual content, Blood, and Pregnancy