How the García Girls Lost Their Accents
Books | Fiction / General
3.7
Julia Alvarez
Uprooted from their family home in the Dominican Republic, the four Garcia sisters - Carla, Sandra, Yolanda, and Sofia - arrive in New York City in 1960 to find a life far different from the genteel existence of maids, manicures, and extended family they left behind. What they have lost - and what they find - is revealed in the fifteen interconnected stories that make up this exquisite novel from one of the premier novelists of our time. Just as it is a feature of the immigrant experience to always look back, the novel begins with thirty-nine-year-old Yolanda's return to the island and moves magically backward in time to the final days before the exile that is to transform the sisters' lives. Along the way we witness their headlong plunge into the American mainstream. Although the girls try to distance themselves from their island life by ironing their hair, forgetting their Spanish, and meeting boys unchaperoned, they remain forever caught between the old world and the new. With bright humor and rare insight, Julia Alvarez vividly evokes the tensions and joys of belonging to two distinct cultures in a novel that is utterly authentic and full of irrepressible spirit.
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More Details:
Author
Julia Alvarez
Pages
290
Publisher
Plume
Published Date
2005
ISBN
0452287073 9780452287075
Community ReviewsSee all
"This was a quick, enjoyable read. The stories told are fairly interesting and amusing, and the Dominican culture presented was different enough from mine that I found it interesting and am curious now to go read more about the revolution and the country. The author makes a great effort to present the stories in a rambling, disjointed, multi-voiced way, using even a backwards time line. The characters are not well developed enough to really be recognizable by their different voices, so changing narrators didn't add much to the story, in my opinion. The backwards time frame was interesting, but also didn't add much to the story. All in all, the novel failed to fully grip me in any of the plotline or the characters. The characters seem to pine for their lost childhoods in the Dominican Republic, but I couldn't help but wonder why they would want to continue living in their enmeshed, privileged family compound with little access to other people or the outside world. It didn't sound very appealing to me. The States, with all of its perils and racism, at least allowed the four girls the opportunity to interact with people who weren't blood relatives! A fun read, with some memorable moments, but honestly, I walk away from the book with little emotional connection or understanding of what the point of it is."
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Rebekah Travis
"Excellent writing and compelling narrative. Highly recommend!"
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Emily Berigan
"Not really a story but a series of memories of a family of 4 girls and their parents. It is a good read but the episodes started to feel kind of similar after a while and I was glad it was done by the end."
John Woakes
