This haunting novel begins in 1900, when many people in Tacarembo explained things to themselves by means or folk-tales or legends. It is a novel with three protagonists. The first one, Pajarita disappears as a baby and mysteriously reappears in a tree. It is left up to the reader to decide whether the lost baby did in fact turn up in the tree, as the family tells it, or if, in fact, we are talking about two different baby girls, one disappeared and dead and the second who happened to be in a tree when the family was looking for the first one. No matter, the family takes Pajarita to its heart, and when she is about fifteen she attracts the attention of a young man from Venice, who asks for her hand in marriage. Pajarita moves with him to Montevideo, produces children, including a daughter Eva, who is the second protagonist of this novel.Eva loves words even from an early age, but her family is poor. At the age of ten, her father asks her to sacrifice her education so that she can work in a shoe shop and earn the money they so desperately need. Eva complies, but she is not treated well by the owner of the shoe shop. Her father, who is friendly with the shoe shop owner, chooses to believe his friend rather than his daughter, creating a family rift. It is not surprising that one day, Eva decides to leave. Through a chain of events, she finds a rich husband and has two children, Robertito and Salome, the third protagonist. By this time, she is living with her family in Buenos Aires. But it is now in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the time of Evita Peron, and the political situation becomes unstable. Eva and her family are forced to move back to Montevideo.Salome grows up surrounded by her relatives from her mother’s family in Montevideo, Uruguay, but again, political instability rears its ugly head, and Salome pays a very heavy price for choices that she made when she was a teenager. (You will have to read the novel to find out what they are).This was such an interesting novel for someone like me who doesn’t know hardly anything about Latin America, and enjoyed learning about it from three fascinating women. These women, and all that they had to endure from their menfolk and from society kept me turning the pages of a book. Carolina de Robertis is also an excellent stylist. There was some truly beautiful writing in this novel, powerful use of metaphor and simile. My favorite moment occurs when Ignazio, the young man from Venice who eventually marries Pajarita is sent by his grandfather to make something of himself:“Listen, I have a little money in the floorboards and I’ll send you to the New World if you swear you’ll build something else, something useful over there, something worth building. Anything. Swear.”It broke, then, the canvas stretched over the world, and Ignazio was not numb, not in a painting at all: he stood in a raw, unfinished world, surrounded by the dead, exposing a fresh layer of living skin.“I swear,” he said.What a wonderful way of describing someone’s sudden understanding that actions have consequences. What a great way of evoking sudden maturity. Five stars. This was a very good story. It's a story about 3 generations of women in Montevideo, Uruguay. The story itself was good, about how the women managed to find their place in the world. Because it took place in Uruguay, it was extra-interesting. It teaches the reader about another culture, the politics of another country, and another mind-set. The characters in the book were mixtures of Indian, Black People, and Immigrants from Italy.
Do You like book Die Unsichtbaren Stimmen: Roman (2009)?
this book is so beautiful and showcased such powerful women. i couldn't put it down.
—Janessa
beautiful prose! very lyrical and dreamy, I loved the imagery!
—Ruedybird
I loved this book. One of my favourites in 2011!
—akash
