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72 of 78 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great Storyline and Great Writing in This Book, April 3, 2008
This review is from: Belong to Me (Hardcover)
A refugee from intellectual city living, Cornelia Brown is the explorer of a new terrain: the burbs. She believes that her own wits and childhood environment have prepared her to live among the families who occupy its picturesque streets. However, as the book opens with her first cocktail party, Cornelia learns that settling in to her new life is not going to be as easy as she thinks; clearly, this is a foreshadowing of things to come. Her neighbor (the leader of the suburban pack) Piper quickly puts Cornelia in her place, although Cornelia is not sure just what that "place" is.
Thus begins the charming tale author Marisa de los Santos has presented in her second book, "Belong to Me." Thankfully, unlike many second novels from authors who have had a successful first book, readers can pick up and enjoy this book without knowing anything about de los Santos or the characters who inhabited her first novel. The joy from the beginning to the end of this story is complete unto itself, without history or explanation. De los Santos's strong characters and lyrical writing engage from the first pages and hold the reader's interest to the end.
Caught up in their own dramas, the women who inhabit the pages of "Belong to Me" are smart, tough, and sometimes catty. Their world encompasses the joys and pain of child-rearing, infidelity, and cancer, as well as the need to present a perfect image to the outside world. The glue that holds them together--as well as the story itself--is the human connection, the ability to reach out to a helping hand when things look most bleak.
This might sound like just another volume in the chick lit genre, but what de los Santos brings to her writing that takes this up a step is her beautiful phrasing. Pick up the book and open to any page. Somewhere therein, the reader will find some emotion or scene so beautifully described that it can only be placed in the realm of serious writers, of "literature."
This is really little surprise, given the author's vocation as poet, with a PhD in creative writing. All that study and writing practice by de los Santos has been carefully enfolded into a very compelling storyline in "Belong to Me." Without being distracted by her beautiful prose, she instead takes her (ok, largely female) audience on a lively journey that makes reading this book hard to put down, using her descriptions merely as enchantment along the way. She grounds her characters and stories in the foibles of daily life, never losing the central storyline despite her talent for turning a phrase.
In the end, "Belong to Me" is a great book because of its solid storytelling. It stands alone with its vulnerability and virtue, and it's likely that readers everywhere are going to be hearing a lot more about Marisa de los Santos.
Christine Zibas, Book Pleasures
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17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
The connections between some of the characters are a bit too contrived; the emotional transformations, sometimes a bit too neat, May 13, 2008
This review is from: Belong to Me (Hardcover)
When readers first meet Cornelia Brown, one of three protagonists in Marisa de los Santos's second novel, BELONG TO ME, it seems that her tale will be one of trading an exciting life in the big city for a quiet one in the suburbs. But what unfolds is much more complex and interesting.
Cornelia and her husband Teo have just moved from New York to a sleepy, upper-class Philadelphia suburb, and she's having a bit of trouble fitting in. She misses the pace, creativity and intellectual stimulation of the city and finds little in common with the other women, wives of professional men, she comes into contact with. She's particularly put off by her snotty neighbor, Piper Truitt. But when she meets the eccentric Lake, a single mom also new to town, she has hope that a solid friendship is developing.
Piper is a stereotypical affluent WASP ice princess. But, in de los Santos's able hands, she undergoes a radical yet mostly believable transformation. Piper and her husband Kyle are the alpha couple of the community. Piper is a mother of two, overly concerned with propriety and appearance. She is most at ease when caring for her kids and spending time with her best friend Elizabeth. When Elizabeth is diagnosed with cancer, Piper's world begins to crumble, but through the illness, she rebuilds it into one more genuine and compassionate. As all of her energy goes into caring for Elizabeth, she finds herself distanced from Kyle and her previous petty concerns and becoming close with Cornelia, the neighbor she once dismissed. Elizabeth's illness challenges Piper to change and to learn to accept not only other people but her true self as well.
Meanwhile, young Dev, a kind-hearted genius preoccupied with String Theory and poetry, is faced with his own set of challenges. Recently uprooted from his hometown after a disastrous seventh grade year, he finds himself at a new school in a new town and finally feeling happy and comfortable. Still, he wonders why his mother chose this location. Could it have something to do with the father he never knew? With the help of friends Aiden and Lyssa and first girlfriend Clare, he starts to put together the missing pieces of his life that, while exciting, unravels the carefully woven lies his mother has told him all along.
The stories of Cornelia, Piper and Dev intersect in a number of compelling ways, resulting in some good plot developments. Yet, overall, this is a character-driven novel, and it is the inner lives of the three main figures that make it such a page-turner. Cornelia's portions are written in first-person narration while those of Piper and Dev are told in third person. Her shift in perspectives is successful because the tone and pace remain consistent, and each character has a worthwhile and unique point of view. The secondary characters --- Elizabeth, Dev's friends, Teo and Cornelia's brother --- are all given just the right amount of attention, adding to and not distracting from the story.
Readers may be familiar with Cornelia, Clare and Teo from de los Santos's debut novel, LOVE WALKED IN, but BELONG TO ME stands on its own well. While the connections between some of the characters are a bit too contrived and the emotional transformations are sometimes a bit too neat, the writing is enjoyable enough and the themes of belonging, friendship and love challenged by secrets and change are universal enough to make this a recommendable title.
--- Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman
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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Well-written but too contrived, boring plot, June 12, 2008
This review is from: Belong to Me (Hardcover)
Another current fiction bestseller that I picked up at the library in my attempt to keep up with what's hot in the bookstores at the moment. The author is new to me, as she may be to many, but she's a skilled writer. Unfortunately, her talent did not successfully trump the complete disinterest I had in the story and any of its characters.
The synopsis sounded good, certainly. From Amazon.com: Everyone has secrets. Some we keep to protect ourselves, others we keep to protect those we love. A devoted city dweller, Cornelia Brown surprised no one more than herself when she was gripped by the sudden, inescapable desire to leave urban life behind and head for an idyllic suburb. Though she knows she and her beloved husband, Teo, have made the right move, she approaches her new life with trepidation and struggles to forge friendships in her new home. Cornelia's mettle is quickly tested by judgmental neighbor Piper Truitt. Perfectly manicured, impeccably dressed, and possessing impossible standards, Piper is the embodiment of everything Cornelia feared she would find in suburbia. A saving grace soon appears in the form of Lake, a warm yet elusive woman who is also a recent arrival in town. As their individual stories unfold, the women become entangled in a web of trust, betrayal, love, and loss that challenges them in ways they never imagined, and that ultimately teaches them what it means for one human being to belong to another.
Much of the story is told in first-person narrative by Cornelia, alternating with third-person views from Piper and Dev, Lake's 14-year old `gifted' son. Piper, ironically, was the only one I actually liked. I was turned off by both Cornelia's and Dev's overly-witty tones and attempts at sardonic humor. With every line, I felt as if the the author were really writing "Aren't you amazed by my incredibly clever dialogue? Aren't I fresh and smart and cutting edge?" It was just so overdone, so early on, that I couldn't get past the sheer phoniness of it.
I also disliked the story itself, and thought the ending really stank. How banal and syrupy can you get?
There were some great literary moments, though, almost always told during Piper's narrative (she should have stuck with Piper's `voice' the whole way through, in my opinion), when what you read and what you see in your mind's eye mesh with perfect clarity: "It seemed impossible that you could stand in a kitchen making hot chocolate and grilled-cheese sandwiches with your best friend dying in the next room, the voices of her children tangled up with the voices of your own, that you could butter bread and watch, through the window, the trees relinquishing their leaves and hear the silvery tumble of water into a kettle, and be suddenly aware that what resided at the heart of every shape and sound was peace. A rightness hovering above all that was wrong, shimmering, like heat rising from a street in summer."
I did try to like it. I SHOULD have liked it. It's likeable! Everyone else will probably love it. I would not be opposed to reading something else by this author, just out of sheer appreciation for her writing skill. If she could tone down the constructed cleverness a little and tell a completely different kind of story, I'd love it. We'll see what she does next.
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