Reviews with content warning for Alcoholism - Family Lore

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Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo

34 reviews

piprigsby's review

emotional hopeful inspiring relaxing medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

i loved the characters in this book. also, the family dynamic was amazing, and i loved how this book centered on how the women in the family all interact and the care they have. one of the best parts was the realistic representations of families and siblings, and how some siblings still have the awkwardness of not always knowing how to reach out, since they did not always grow up together or did for only short periods of time.

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_weirdreads13's review

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emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I am so disappointed with this lecture. As a Puertorrican (I'm a fellow Caribbean, I have an attachment to La Kiskeya), I really really wanted to loved this book, to the point that I would love to have it in my shelf. Elizabeth really had a good premise for the book: the story of a family saga and a woman grieving her life and family. I think the lack of depth in the stories of the character's is what made me lack enjoying and connecting with the book. Another thing that I felt was a "killing vibe" of my lecture was the jumping between times (present and past). I think the timeline in the stories will change suddenly and without any given reason or connection. I even wrote down what I felt needed more depth in the story:

The different perspective between the daughters and their mothers: It's obvious that Mamá Silvia, Flor, Pastora, Camila, Ona and Yadira had different relationship with their mothers, according to the time each one were born. Why Mamá Silvia despised her daughters, except Camila? How Flor and Pastora view sex, different from their daughters that were exposed to a different culture?
Silvia's and Susano's past: if this is a family saga, why was not the past of the matriarch and the patriarch included? It was because of them that everything started. And don't think "but then Elizabeth would have to start with Mamá's and Papá's family", no, this is the story of the Marte family, and because of them and how they raised their kids is why the story developed itself.
La Vieja's mount: how did she get mounted? It will be interested to see more in depth this character and the impact she had on Pastora and Flor.
More about Samuel, the brother: what do you mean you are going to give me a family saga and leave out the brother?! "It's a tale of sisters". No, it's a family saga. What was his role in the family history? How he impacted the sisters' life?
Flor and Nazario: developing a "relationship" between them, making something happened would make Flor to have a deep secret. I feel that what happened in the book was superficial.
Camila: she was the youngest of the daughter and she was raised differently from her sisters and, again, it's a family saga and she was not often included in the story nor how was her relationship with Flor, Matilde, Pastora, Samuel, Mamá and Papá. Adding her by the last part of the book was not in the bingo card, which takes me to the next point.
The connection that could develop between Pastora and Camila: they have something in common, they are the youngest of the children and both were harassed by the same pendejo. I would love for their story and relationship to have more depth.
Matilde's marriage: again, superficiality is what killed the depth and connection of the character's and their story.
Flor's character: the main character, the next matriarch, the person who the story goes around the story of her marriage? Which is the "continuation" of the Marte family? And the struggles the marriage went through? Flor's feelings toward her marriage and life in general?
Ona's infertility: the daughter's story was like reading a teenager's story: confusing, suddenly changing, emotionally and irrational with their love story. What Ona really wanted? How it affected her? How it affected her relationship?
The nun: another character who is from the family and you are not going to tell me the impact of the character on the Marte family?
Yadira's role in the book: the most misunderstood character. I didn't understood her role nor the reason of her perspective in the book.
Flor's role in her family: for me, Flor was the most special of the family (obvio), but I wish to see more of her role in the family.
Flor's grief: by the end of the book we can understand that Flor knew she was dying. It will be so cool an amazing to see more of the process of Flor grieving her life while she reminiscence of the past. This would have give the story a huge different perspective on every story of the Marte family (which remind me of Erik Erikson's theory: despair vs integrity, the last "stage" of a person's life. I'm not saying that the book should be an analysis of Flor's life, but I believe I put this here because I've been studying for my test, LOL!)

As a person who is fascinated by people and their story (if you couldn't noticed by me involving psychology theories, LOL), I really really wanted to love this book. I will give the benefit of the doubt to Elizabeth, because it was her first adult novel. I will read from her too Clap When You Land which is kind of too another "family saga" and see if there is difference between the two genres and how she writes them.

In conclusion: this book had so much potential but it felt superficial.

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bookishplantmom's review against another edition

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emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

This was beautifully written. I found the way the stories are intertwined compelling albeit a bit hard to follow. I was not all that emotionally invested. I can’t quite put my finger on why that is. Generally a good read.

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znvisser's review against another edition

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emotional mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

I love multiple POV family sagas, but four sisters and two of their daughters is too many similar characters to be introduced to in such a short story; I kept forgetting what happened to whom or whose daughter they were, so I spent the first half of each chapter trying to remember which woman, partner and/or story it was about.

As my Spanish is very limited (and most of my interpretations were more a result of more elaborate French and Italian knowledge), I fear lots of it went over my head. Although I understand it is more authentic if bilingual people think and speak in a mix of their languages, I understood most of these conversations as fully Spanish anyway, so I don’t understand the need for codeswitching in text. And Ona’s quotes interrupting the story and just rerouting it elsewhere was confusing too, because it was yet another (third!) cause for me to lose track of what was going on. Because of all these storylines I felt there were many loose ends too. I wasn’t uninterested in these women but reading about them in this way was a struggle, and additionally, there was a surprising amount of sex and horniness for a family story (in part due to Ona’s magical “wet wet” ?🫠).

There were some details in the writing that I really liked but as a reading experience this was weird and confusing.

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yvo_about_books's review against another edition

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emotional reflective slow-paced

2.0

Finished reading: August 6th 2024

"It’s silly to have a nickname for a nickname, but we’d always loved taking apart each other’s names and seeing how else we could arrange the letters into love."

I'm honestly still shocked this happened. I absolutely loved Elizabeth Acevedo's YA books, and I confess that I added Family Lore without even reading the blurb first. I hadn't realized it was her adult fiction debut, and I hadn't realized it was going to be a family saga with a magical realism vibe... Because I probably wouldn't be in such a hurry to read it otherwise. This type of family sagas doesn't usually work all that well for me, although there have been exceptions in the past... But sadly Family Lore wasn't one of them. I have to stress here that this is by no means a badly written book; it's simply a case of me not being a good fit for this story. Add the fact that my fickle reading mood has been acting up again, and this type of slower and more character-driven stories just don't work for me at the moment, and it's definitely a 'it's not you, it's me' problem. Family Lore is 100% a magical realism family saga a la Gabriel García Márquez, and if you enjoy this kind of stories you will most likely enjoy Family Lore as well. There is a huge cast of characters involved and a multiple POV structure to consider where we learn more about the lives of most of them. Make sure to brace yourself for a LOT of drama and issues! For me personally they overshadowed the truly interesting (and magical realism) part of the plot, but then again I'm never a fan of family drama in the first place. Like I said before, I simply wasn't a good match for Family Lore! That will teach me to read the blurb first even if I've loved the author's work in the past...

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just_one_more_paige's review

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emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

I have read a few of Acevedo's YA novels (in verse and prose), The Poet X and With the Fire on High. And they were both phenomenal. And so, I was really excited to pick this, her first adult novel, up.

Here's the blurb from Goodreads: "Flor has a gift: she can predict, to the day, when someone will die. So when she decides she wants a living wake--a party to bring her family and community together to celebrate the long life she's led--her sisters are surprised. Has Flor forseen her own death, or someone else's? Does she have other motives? She refuses to tell her sisters, Matilde, Pastora, and Camila. But Flor isn't the only person with secrets. Matilde has tried for decades to cover the extent of her husband's infidelity, but she must now confront the true state of her marriage. Pastora is typically the most reserved sister, but Flor's wake motivates this driven woman to solve her sibling's problems. Camila is the youngest sibling, and often the forgotten one, but she's decided she no longer wants to be taken for granted. And the next generation, cousins Ona and Yadi, face tumult of their own: Yadi is reuniting with her first love, who was imprisoned when they were both still kids; Ona is married for years and attempting to conceive. Ona must decide whether it's worth it to keep trying--to have a child, and the anthropology research that's begun to feel lackluster."

There were a lot of narrative voices in this novel. We heard from Flor, and all her sisters, as well as her daughter Ona and niece Yadi. And normally I appreciate this style of storytelling, but in this case, I found it to be rather confusing. There was a lot of jumping around both in whose perspective we were in and what time period (look back/past or present-day). Plus, there were some snippets that were "interview" style, as Ona was working on her anthropological research and was conducting recorded conversations with her family members. And, in the time honored tradition of families everywhere (especially female family members and, not from personal experience but definitely what I've gleaned from literature, Latin(a) family members), there is quite a bit of talking about each other. All that to say, I really did struggle to follow who was who. and who was narrating. and what was happening to who, and when it was happening to them. I did eventually settle, mostly, into the narrations and characters connections, but this is definitely not a novel one can passively read (or listen to, in my case...of note here, the audiobook narrators were fantastic).

One aspect I was really impressed by, and that should come as no surprise considering Acevedo's reputation, was the absolutely gorgeous writing. You can tell her background in poetry from the deftness of the wordplay and flow and the rhythm in the writing. So smooth, so good. I also am always here for a classic Spanish/Latin literature vibe of intergenerational family with abilities that border on magic (magical realism). In the vein of Like Water for Chocolate and anything from Garcia Marquez, this hits. But there was also an irreverence to it here that I loved. The thematic threads of this book were anchored in a unique and open and creative examination of female bodies/pleasure (mostly self), including menopause and fertility and breastfeeding and masturbation and many other aspects that everyone is afraid to talk about, and therefore never see enough light/normalization. It’s a beautiful conversation about something that should always be considered that beautiful, but instead is labeled vulgar and loose. That spoke to my soul and was an absolute highlight of the reading experience for me.

On the whole though...I don't know. This novel had all the elements. I simply loved some trajectories - Yadi and Matilde in particular - and in general the way they all moved and wove together as a family, as women, and the overall message of how women support each other, but don’t always talk about the things that would actually be helpful. And yet, something was missing in the novel as a whole, some piece that would have made it great. Maybe the pacing (it felt a bit slow, surprising considering the number of characters we were following) or maybe how hard I had to work to piece everything together or maybe that the ending(s) felt a bit anticlimactic for me? But in the end, while this was a very solid overall read, it was not as special as I'd hoped. I definitely think she shines more in her YA work.

“Some things take time to cure. Candles aren’t candles until they’ve hardened in the dark and can be turned on without the wax melting before the flame can consume it. Soap isn’t soap until the lye and lather binds. Rum takes weeks of adding honey and bay leaf and wine before it can be called or served as mama-juana. Cannabis even needs darkness, to shed itself of moisture, before becoming something that will burn, heal. You’re in a curing season.”

“How do you learn to live with what will not be? How do you console yourself with the life that you have when the humans you love most are hopeful for more than you?”

“I like to think there was a time, before our mothers, and theirs, and theirs and theirs, some great-great who knew her own pleasure. A time before we were wrapped in corsets, and courtships, and the approximation of proper. I like to think we were nations of women who undulated to a music all our own.”

“We learned in the shadows, when boys who should not, did. When girls we loved loved us back, right? We learned in the big beds of other people’s parents, didn’t we? On a rare occasion, we might have even learned in the sunlight. We might have learned in the quiet. We learned as we listened to the still, to the loudness of our hearts. But not from our mothers.”

“It amazes me how few questions I know to ask, or whom to ask them of, until it’s already too late for the answers to be useful. How do lineages of women from colonized places, where emphasis is put on silent enduring, learn when and where to confide in their own family if forbearance is the only attitude elevated and modeled?”

“And I know the heart is a burial ground for memories that shame and hurt. You can visit and place flowers there and make it a tomb. Or let those things act as fertilizer and pay no homage.”

“…all of us are magic wrapped in skin.”

Content Warnings

now_booking's review

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emotional hopeful mysterious reflective sad medium-paced

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 an autobuy author for me. I’m not a huge fan of YA fiction but in Elizabeth Acevedo’s hands, I’m typically sold. So when I heard she had released her first adult novel, I rushed to get it. And I’m not disappointed.

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.

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fkshg8465's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

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

This book was full of pain, love, self-discovery, and sisterhood. All great ingredients for a good story. Rounding up to a four. I was satisfied with the ending, surprised by some of the middle, and enjoyed the novelty of the beginning.

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atamano's review

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emotional hopeful reflective sad slow-paced

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

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celery's review

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dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective sad slow-paced

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

How many different words do you need to describe a vagina?

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