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now_booking's review
- 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
allisonwatkins's review
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.5
Graphic: Infertility and Infidelity
fkshg8465's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
Graphic: Alcoholism, Body shaming, Confinement, Death, Emotional abuse, Infertility, Infidelity, Mental illness, Rape, Sexual content, Slavery, Blood, Excrement, Medical content, Grief, Death of parent, Pregnancy, Abandonment, Sexual harassment, and Deportation
atamano's review
- 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
hazelgirl21's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.75
Graphic: Sexual content
Moderate: Infertility
Minor: Confinement, Infidelity, and Pregnancy
celery's review
- 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
saucy_bookdragon's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
Family Lore has a lot of great ingredients for a great book. As usual, Elizabeth Acevedo's prose is absolutely delicious, I want to eat it! There's also a lot of great themes and character moments in this. In particular, this looks at womanhood in a complicated but loving family structure, also this is very unabashed in how it explores sexuality. I also found Ona really interesting (her magical power is, and I shit you not, a magical super-vagina) and I liked the family dynamics.
Despite all the great parts of Family Lore, it's a bit underbaked. There's too many POVs and the plot is meandering across a long timeline in a non-linear way, to the point this feels like an anthology of slice of life stories. At one point I even forgot that this was about a woman who can predict deaths having a living wake. With this many somewhat unrelated plotlines and backstories, I couldn't care for them all.
Graphic: Death, Infertility, Infidelity, and Death of parent
Moderate: Pregnancy
psistillreadyou's review against another edition
Graphic: Infertility, Infidelity, Miscarriage, and Sexual content
Moderate: Child abuse
caitgiam's review against another edition
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
2.75
I felt like the editing needed work. It was hard to connect with the characters which I think was mostly due to the amount of perspectives as well as the shifting timelines. There were alot of details to keep straight and not quite enough development on any one character. At times it felt like multiple different books combined and I felt myself flowing in and out of interest.
Graphic: Infidelity
Moderate: Alcoholism, Infertility, and Death of parent
clairelisebella's review
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.0
Moderate: Child abuse, Infidelity, Toxic relationship, and Death of parent
Minor: Alcoholism, Miscarriage, Misogyny, Vomit, Pregnancy, and Sexual harassment