The Divine Husband: A Novel [Paperback]

Francisco Goldman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 17, 2005

One of the most talented and award-winning writers of his generation, Francisco Goldman’s third novel,The Divine Husband, appeared to wide and rapturous acclaim. Beginning with a single, possibly scandalous love poem by Jose Marti, Cuba’s greatest revolutionary-poet-hero with an infamous secret love life,The Divine Husbandis the story of Maria de las Nieves Moran, a former nun forced out of her convent by a revolution in a Central American capital. While making her way in this metropolis nicknamed “The Little Paris,” she enrolls in a writing class taught by Jose Marti, under whose spell Maria de las Nieves and her classmates quickly fall. Soon after, Maria de las Nieves flees her home for New York, where Marti has also relocated -- a crucial interval that shaped Marti’s consciousness. Nearly a century later, an elderly woman in Massachusetts hires a college student to investigate her claim that she is the illegitimate offspring of Marti and Maria de las Nieves. Mixing a lovingly re-created historical past with often hilarious, ironic, and moving conjecture that brings to life an unforgettable heroine and her remarkable collection of friends, nemeses, and rival suitors,The Divine Husbandis a magnificent American novel.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

No reader will come away hungry from the five-course meal of Francisco Goldman's inventive third novel, The Divine Husband. Set in Central America and New York in the late 19th Century, this is the story of Maria de las Nieves Moran, a clever, strong-willed girl of mixed heritage--half Irish-American, half Mayan Indian. In childhood, she and her closest friend, Paquita, discovered the pleasures of making themselves sneeze with fibers of wool extracted from their clothing. When Paquita, at age 12, began to return the attentions of a rapacious Liberal reformer nicknamed El Anticristo, Maria de las Nieves made Paquita swear not to surrender her virginity before she did. Immediately, the scheming Maria de las Nieves announced her vocation, and joined a convent. Goldman's concentrated prose is leavened with eccentric, often brilliant metaphors (the spread of a rumor is described as "a hemispheric cloud of pigeons looking for statues to land on"), calling to mind the great magical realist writers--Grass, Kundera, Garcia Marquez--and ensuring that not a word is wasted on flat exposition. --Regina Marler --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

The Guatemalan-American Goldman (The Ordinary Seaman, etc.) has used the often violent modern history of Central America as the backdrop of his two previous novels. His latest plunges back to the 19th century, telling the story of a woman who might have borne an illegitimate child of the great Cuban poet, Jose Martí. First a nun, then a translator for the British ambassador, María de las Nieves Moran is involved with four men, one of whom is Jose Martí. Unfortunately, Martí never transcends his wooden theatricality as "the poet" in Goldman's narrative. Much more interesting are María's three other suitors, especially María's true love, a mysterious boy whom the ambassador has plucked out of obscurity and wants to make the king of the Mosquitoes, an Indian tribe on the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua. Certain sequences (a journey to the interior of the republic, the romance between María and the "king" of the Mosquitos, etc.) are beautifully written. The narrative, however, loses his sense of what is central and what is peripheral. The novel suffers from too much clutter and the obsession with Martí, a bothersome McGuffin in an otherwise independently interesting story.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 480 pages
• Publisher: Grove Press (August 17, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0802142214
• ISBN-13: 978-0802142214
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,212,417 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The Literary Equivalent of a Mugging, January 9, 2006

By 

K. Mccandless (Earls Court, London United Kingdom) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Divine Husband: A Novel (Paperback)

Wow - what an extremely frustrating novel. On the one hand, for the first three quarters of the book, I thought it was absolutely delightful. Goldman's an excellent writer, is able to evoke the world he's writing about, and mixes both the comic and tragic elements masterfully. And then, about seventy pages before the end, it all goes off the rails.

The mystery which most of the book has been building up to is resolved with an unlikely deus ex machina. The heroine and her supporting cast start acting strange and uncharacteristicly. And the last chapters make an awkward, poorly written shift from the third person point of view to the first.

Really, as much as I liked Goldman's first two books, I can't recommend The Divine Husband at all. It should have been longer or it should have been rewritten one more time or whatever. Let's hope the next one is better...

24 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars The Divine Bore, February 10, 2005

By 

Book Maven - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Divine Husband: A Novel (Hardcover)

The historical details in this book are quite interesting. Other than that, the book is excruciatingly dull. Though Maria (the main character) is supposed to be a sort of rebellious femenist character, her actions don't really back up that facade. In addition, it takes so long for the action to develop that even after a hundred pages, I still could find nothing in the book that grabbed me. In general, most of the characters are flat, one-dimetional and rather unlikable. Their motivations are unclear and murky; Maria makes a pact with her friend Paquita that stipulates that Paquita cannot lose her virginity until Maria loses hers, principally because Maria cannot abide Paquita's much older, revolutionary fiance. Maria intends to thwart the union by becoming a nun. Ridiculous? Yes, especially because the religious faith of the girls seems to be quite superficial (and of course, the plan does not work). Although it sounds silly, I really wanted to like this book (...mostly because the quality of the paper is so nice and the cover is quite attractive!)However, for someone who enjoys everything from Krantz to Thackeray to Rushdie, I was quite shocked that there was a dearth of qualities that I could enjoy in this book.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Three and a half stars, August 9, 2006

By 

Mary Sharratt "Author of Daughters of the Wit... (Lancashire, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Divine Husband: A Novel (Paperback)

Francisco Goldman's THE DIVINE HUSBAND is an epic novel set in an unnamed Central American republic in the late 19th century. The protagonist is Maria de las Nieves, a teenaged novice nun forced out of the convent when anti-clerical revolutionaries ban the religious orders. Her subsequent life as a young woman trying to scratch out an independent living as a translator is narrated in part through the point of view of the men who are fascinated with her--until she has a child out of wedlock and refuses to name the father.

Like the previous reviewer, I was thoroughly enchanted with the first three quarters of the book. The writing is absolutely vivid and beautiful, wonderfully researched and full of quirky characters and dashes of magical realism, such a nuns who can bi-locate and be in two places at once.

However, after much build up, we finally learn the story of Maria's secret love affair with the young "Mosquito King," and this is the least convincing part of the book. Everything that happens afterward seems clumsy and anti-climactic. The author seems to lose focus at the end of the book, spending more time describing the life of Jose Marti, exiled Cuban poet, than fully developing Maria's story.

However, it still gets three and a half stars because the beginning and middle of the book are so strong.

-Mary Sharratt, author of The Vanishing Point