A review by mdabernig
The Invisible Mountain, by Carolina De Robertis
3.0
Part of me really loved this book beyond the rating I gave it, but the issues I had with small parts of it just won't go away.
The story centres around three generations of women in the one family and we get their story one after the other. We start with Parajita, a miracle child who meets a young Venetian gondola maker when he comes to Uruguay and quickly marries him. The two are young and in love and for a while their lives are blissful until real life invades and the spectres from Ignazio's Venetian childhood gets in the way when Parajita falls pregnant. They have children, but soon cracks appear in their marriage as Ignazio starts drinking and gambling and it culminates one night when he hits Parajita and flees the house in shame leaving her to raise the children herself. Parajita starts earning money and having an independent life as she raises her children until one day Ignazio returns, wanting to prove himself to her.
Once the family is eventually reconciled their daughter, Eva, quits school and goes to work for a friend of her father's. No one is aware at the time that her father's friend has less than pure intentions with the child and by the time that Eva realises what has happened, she has left it too late. The man gives Eva a pair of shoes, and uses them as evidence of her stealing from him when she runs home after the first time he assaults her and tells her parents that that is why she ran home before she could explain anything and making it impossible for her to refuse to go back.
This section of the book was quite difficult to read and Eva, from a child suffering so cruely, to the adult who is estranged from her father and running away from home with a childhood friend is an interesting character. I must confess though, for much of her section when she arrives in Argentina and then when she returns to Uruguay with her own family, I found her a very difficult character to like and it bothered me her behaviour to her husband who had given up so much for her.
One of the main things that bothered me about this book was that it seemed impossible for a strong female character to be strong unless it was contrasted by a weak male and this was particularly evident in Eva's marriage. We are met with her husband, a good man, a doctor, someone who went against expectation to provide her a good home that she manipulated into marrying her. She then, in a fit of rebellion, manages to make it impossible for them to remain in their home and then blames him as she starts an affair with the friend she had originally ran away to Argentina with who is now a transexual and refuses to return to Argentina when they are able. It's complicated, but perhaps it was just me, but I just found Eva, for the most part, hard to root for despite her tragic childhood.
The final part of the story centres on Salome, Eva's daughter who is quiet and studious and suddenly finds her self engulfed in a revolution. She starts full of great ideas and beliefs, but eventually brutal reality catches up and she gets captured, tortured, raped and imprisoned, refusing to flee when the rest of her group does because she's pregnant and thus being imprisoned for years only to come out years later to find out life has moved on. The man she loved and had a relationship with before has moved on and married one of the women who had been imprisoned with her, her friends have all moved on, her family is all older and her daughter is now in America being raised by her brother.
There was a lot about this book that I loved, the very end few scenes are beautiful and the characterisation is always good and each of the women have a very distinctive character (for better or worse.) My main issue was the way the writer wrote the men in the book. Outwith Ignazio and to a lesser degree Roberto, the male characters in the book were at best one dimensional and inferior and I say this as a woman, but I don't need to have strong women at the expense of strong men - it defeats the purpose for me.
This book is definite worth a read though. The issues I had with it don't detract from the story or how hard it is to put it down at times.
The story centres around three generations of women in the one family and we get their story one after the other. We start with Parajita, a miracle child who meets a young Venetian gondola maker when he comes to Uruguay and quickly marries him. The two are young and in love and for a while their lives are blissful until real life invades and the spectres from Ignazio's Venetian childhood gets in the way when Parajita falls pregnant. They have children, but soon cracks appear in their marriage as Ignazio starts drinking and gambling and it culminates one night when he hits Parajita and flees the house in shame leaving her to raise the children herself. Parajita starts earning money and having an independent life as she raises her children until one day Ignazio returns, wanting to prove himself to her.
Once the family is eventually reconciled their daughter, Eva, quits school and goes to work for a friend of her father's. No one is aware at the time that her father's friend has less than pure intentions with the child and by the time that Eva realises what has happened, she has left it too late. The man gives Eva a pair of shoes, and uses them as evidence of her stealing from him when she runs home after the first time he assaults her and tells her parents that that is why she ran home before she could explain anything and making it impossible for her to refuse to go back.
This section of the book was quite difficult to read and Eva, from a child suffering so cruely, to the adult who is estranged from her father and running away from home with a childhood friend is an interesting character. I must confess though, for much of her section when she arrives in Argentina and then when she returns to Uruguay with her own family, I found her a very difficult character to like and it bothered me her behaviour to her husband who had given up so much for her.
One of the main things that bothered me about this book was that it seemed impossible for a strong female character to be strong unless it was contrasted by a weak male and this was particularly evident in Eva's marriage. We are met with her husband, a good man, a doctor, someone who went against expectation to provide her a good home that she manipulated into marrying her. She then, in a fit of rebellion, manages to make it impossible for them to remain in their home and then blames him as she starts an affair with the friend she had originally ran away to Argentina with who is now a transexual and refuses to return to Argentina when they are able. It's complicated, but perhaps it was just me, but I just found Eva, for the most part, hard to root for despite her tragic childhood.
The final part of the story centres on Salome, Eva's daughter who is quiet and studious and suddenly finds her self engulfed in a revolution. She starts full of great ideas and beliefs, but eventually brutal reality catches up and she gets captured, tortured, raped and imprisoned, refusing to flee when the rest of her group does because she's pregnant and thus being imprisoned for years only to come out years later to find out life has moved on. The man she loved and had a relationship with before has moved on and married one of the women who had been imprisoned with her, her friends have all moved on, her family is all older and her daughter is now in America being raised by her brother.
There was a lot about this book that I loved, the very end few scenes are beautiful and the characterisation is always good and each of the women have a very distinctive character (for better or worse.) My main issue was the way the writer wrote the men in the book. Outwith Ignazio and to a lesser degree Roberto, the male characters in the book were at best one dimensional and inferior and I say this as a woman, but I don't need to have strong women at the expense of strong men - it defeats the purpose for me.
This book is definite worth a read though. The issues I had with it don't detract from the story or how hard it is to put it down at times.