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annetjeberg's review against another edition
3.0
I really wanted to love this book more. I love the setting, I love the story, and the characters are interesting and likeable.
What is missing though? I felt I was left out, and watching the story from far. It didn't really grab me, or pull me in, and that is what I enjoy when reading.
It was good. Not bad. But just maybe not for me.
What is missing though? I felt I was left out, and watching the story from far. It didn't really grab me, or pull me in, and that is what I enjoy when reading.
It was good. Not bad. But just maybe not for me.
manaledi's review against another edition
4.0
Fundamentally [a:Edwidge Danticat|3525|Edwidge Danticat|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1226496700p2/3525.jpg] is amazing. This is at least the second of her books I've read and I continue to be awed by the descriptive power of her words to evoke Haiti. I follow the Haiti-DR border conflict both academically (for the past) and in the news today, and good fiction like this is more powerful at presenting reality than any combination of "facts."
molsballou's review against another edition
5.0
The negative goodreads reviews of this book come from such a place of privilege, I want to reach through the computer and slap their ignorant authors.
The book recounts a harrowing massacre from the point of view of one person. I read one review that lambasts it for not covering the entire scope of the massacre. While it doesn't—and I would argue it can't, as a first person narrative—it does a pretty remarkable job of showing the expanse of the devastation in small details... like in that Señora Valencia's servant at the end has rope burns around her neck. She's not a character we've met before, but we know she lived through the massacre, too.
I read another review saying that it's too hard to read a book that's all negative. Um... don't read a book about a genocide if you don't want a bum out. But more importantly, Danticat has woven such a beautiful narrative—with observations about nature and human kindness interlaced with tragedy—that it never felt like a slog to read. I mean, unless you only read books for escapism, I guess. In which case, you're invited to never talk to me about books. Or movies. Or anything.
This book is great, and because it feels like the USA is falling into the same poisonous thinking that led The Dominican Republic to the 1937 Parsley Massacre, it felt like a very important book for right now. 2018.
The book recounts a harrowing massacre from the point of view of one person. I read one review that lambasts it for not covering the entire scope of the massacre. While it doesn't—and I would argue it can't, as a first person narrative—it does a pretty remarkable job of showing the expanse of the devastation in small details... like in that Señora Valencia's servant at the end has rope burns around her neck. She's not a character we've met before, but we know she lived through the massacre, too.
I read another review saying that it's too hard to read a book that's all negative. Um... don't read a book about a genocide if you don't want a bum out. But more importantly, Danticat has woven such a beautiful narrative—with observations about nature and human kindness interlaced with tragedy—that it never felt like a slog to read. I mean, unless you only read books for escapism, I guess. In which case, you're invited to never talk to me about books. Or movies. Or anything.
This book is great, and because it feels like the USA is falling into the same poisonous thinking that led The Dominican Republic to the 1937 Parsley Massacre, it felt like a very important book for right now. 2018.
justjoel's review against another edition
5.0
This was a tough read, maybe made more so by what was happening in the USA as I read it.
This book delivers a fictionalized account of the Parsley Massacre, an event that took place in the Dominican Republic in 1937 where the nationalists decided the Haitians (who were mostly in country to work fields and were considered to be only slightly useful and were barely tolerated) had to go. Because skin tones were often similar, the way the DR identified the Haitians was to carry parsley and ask them to tell them what it was (Haitians, whose ancestors were from Africa, did not pronounce it the same as those from the DR whose ancestors were Spanish). I didn't even know such an event had occurred until I read this book.
So, basically, this book just made me realize people have never really needed skin color as an excuse to hate one another, and that nationalists have just been trash since forever.
The loss, the grief, the pain of not knowing the fate of loved ones—all these things combined to make this a painful experience. Sometimes reading was too much and I'd have to set it down, then I was hesitant to pick it up again.
Danticat's prose is—as it was in Breath, Eyes, Memory—beautiful and sparse, but at times cuts sharp with bone-deep accuracy.
This book delivers a fictionalized account of the Parsley Massacre, an event that took place in the Dominican Republic in 1937 where the nationalists decided the Haitians (who were mostly in country to work fields and were considered to be only slightly useful and were barely tolerated) had to go. Because skin tones were often similar, the way the DR identified the Haitians was to carry parsley and ask them to tell them what it was (Haitians, whose ancestors were from Africa, did not pronounce it the same as those from the DR whose ancestors were Spanish). I didn't even know such an event had occurred until I read this book.
So, basically, this book just made me realize people have never really needed skin color as an excuse to hate one another, and that nationalists have just been trash since forever.
The loss, the grief, the pain of not knowing the fate of loved ones—all these things combined to make this a painful experience. Sometimes reading was too much and I'd have to set it down, then I was hesitant to pick it up again.
Danticat's prose is—as it was in Breath, Eyes, Memory—beautiful and sparse, but at times cuts sharp with bone-deep accuracy.
kappareads's review
4.0
This book really messed me up. It talks about the purging of Haitians from the Dominican Republic in 1937, and those descriptions are already sad and all, but this book takes a well defined trope often seen in "disaster novels" (where there's a large catastrophe/massacre/terrible event that turns the main character's life upside down) and completely does away with it. A moving novel with historical significance makes this a must read.
anngiebc's review against another edition
4.0
I love that each of Danticat's books and stories have a central theme that's important to the time period she's writing about but also symbolic to what the character/s are going through. She's just an amazing story teller and I know everything that she does is very much intentional. This wasn't a very traumatic or dramatic style of writing, but traumatic events happened. I think it's important to also tell stories through this mundane and normal writing writing style, it enforces that important tragic events like the one she tells are important to show from this perspective and narrative.
catalinalao's review against another edition
4.0
3.5 stars. I enjoyed the writing but she started losing me a bit in the last quarter of the book.
labougie's review
challenging
dark
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
3.75