A review by bufally47
In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez

4.0

I hate that the blurb for this novel implies the four Mirabal sisters were merely accessories to their “jailed husbands” – it’s what kept me from reading this for so long. This is about the sisters – their time in boarding school, their crushes, their friends, their relationships with faith, their resilience and sure, their flawed marriages, but from their perspectives. Alvarez manages to breathe enough life into the characters to temper the horror of the story; it’s far from crushingly depressing. After all, they didn’t know they were going to be murdered. Minerva is the badass, and her perspective was empowering; where I would have cowed to authority, she sized up her adversary and found his weakness. (

Spoiler

I’m thinking specifically of the guard who detained them during their trip to clean out her old house, when she subtly threatened to report him to Peña if they were further impeded.

) Patria was most alien to me, but that made her early religious calling, then early marriage, all the more interesting. Maria Teresa’s early chapters are a little cloying but she ended up being my favorite character because of her naturally upbeat (if somewhat materialistic) nature and, more importantly, the way she viewed her own part of the revolution. For her it was about loyalty to her sister, and even simply about having a little adventure. I think this is such an underexamined aspect of some revolutionaries; it’s not always all about the principles. All in all, 3.5 stars because the final day of the mariposas was dragged out unnecessarily. The writing was rather simple but effective.