Eccentric Neighborhood [Hardcover]

Rosario Ferre (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1997

Eccentric Neighborhoods is a an attempt to lay bare the psychological conflicts that determine the relationships between mothers and daughters and the story of Puerto Rico's transformation, from the beginning of the century, into a spearhead of the Caribbean.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

The reader might want to take notes to keep the characters straight while enjoying this sprawling yet insular saga of two families of Puerto Rico's social and financial elite. The old-money Rivas de Santillana are sugar plantation owners with a penultimate generation of colorful women individualizing themselves within confined social roles. The Vernets are cement entrepreneurs whose scions are complex and deeply flawed men. Narrator Elvira tells the stories of her forebears, the fortunes and loves they gained and lost, and the stunning tragedies of the rich. But it is in the details?the small, bright, peculiar incidents of everyday life?that the novel truly shines. At the center of this fascinating, convoluted book is the troubled relationship between Elvira and her imposing mother, Clarissa. An ambitious and sure-handed offering by a National Book Award finalist for House on the Lagoon (LJ 8/95), this novel is recommended for most public libraries.
-?Janet Ingraham Dwyer, Worthington P.L., Ohio
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Ferr‚'s second novel in English, and first since her NBA- nominated The House by the Lagoon (1995), creates a colorful family saga as a way to explore the modern political and social history of her native Puerto Rico. The narrator, Elvira Vernet, claims descent from two prominent families whose divergent natures effectively embody contrary strains in the national character. Elvira's mother, Clarissa Rivas de Santillana, grew up among a privileged family made wealthy by its several sugar plantations and given to a dreamlike, contemplative ``faith in inspiration, the importance of aesthetic experience, and love of nature.'' Ferr‚ skillfully traces the consequences of the Santillanas' passivity throughout three generations, focusing on the educational and marital experiences of Clarissa and her four sisters (``the five Ledas of Mount Olympus''), all named after their studious mother's favorite literary heroines. The best of their several stories include the continuing romantic misadventures of ``Tia Lakhm‚'' and the betrayal of the devotion to poetry of ``Tia Dido'' (when her literary hero Juan Ramon Jimenez comes to lunch, and the scales fall from Dido's eyes forever). As the five daughters attend the university and their circle of acquaintances widens, the family is gradually drawn toward modern industrialism, leftist politics, the US, and the seeds of their ruin. By contrast, the family of Elvira's father, the Vernets, are dominated by patriarch Santiago (``Chaquito'') and his four sons: bluff, extroverted careerists whose commercial ice-plant and cement factory prosper, placing them in the forefront of Puerto Rico's struggles for independence, though nothing can save them from a destiny of violent conflict, infidelity, and suicide. Moving like a firestorm, the novel throws off subsidiary characters and subplots with too-often confusing and occasionally reckless abandon. It's difficult to absorb all the particulars of Ferr‚'s crowded narrative, and to distinguish among her many characters and their convoluted relationships. Still, one admires Ferr‚'s ferocious ingenuity and energy as she depicts a society and century in flux. This most demanding of her novels so far is probably also the best. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Farrar Straus & Giroux (October 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374924902
• ISBN-13: 978-0374924904
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,164,266 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A gleaming little gem, intelligently written., February 15, 1999

By 

A. DeCarlo (Annapolis, Maryland) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Eccentric Neighborhoods (Paperback)

The stories told by the narrator, Elvira, about several generations of her family, make you wish she had more aunts, uncles, grandparents, and parents for us to meet. The author has a slightly quirky way of introducing the reader to each of Elvira's colorful ancestors and of telling what ultimately is Elvira's story. This is not a novel, per se, but a collection of short, connected stories that, when all told, form a complete picture.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars You'll disappear for days., November 26, 1997

By 

Candace "thepageturner" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Eccentric Neighborhoods (Hardcover)

Those of us who were outraged that Rosario Ferré did not win the National Book Award for House on the Lagoon, will be delighted that she has a new offering. Eccentric Neighborhoods follows the fortunes of two Puerto Rican families from the end of the 19th century to the present, using the women of the family to exemplify the knife's edge where so many Latinas balance-a family that proclaims itself to be modern while limiting their daughters' choices. Ferré wisely steers away from the magic realism that has become a Latin cliche in the hands of anyone but Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and tells a straightforward, compelling tale of plantation society on a collision course with the changing world. Unfortunately, the stunning, un-put-downable House on the Lagoon is a tough act to follow, and while Eccentric Neighborhoods certainly ranks above the rest of this year's Latin-themed fiction, it lacks the depth and complexity of her first novel. Ferré is a beautiful writer, and I'll definitely be thrilled to follow her career. I look forward to what she comes up with next.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Magic carpet ride to the land of plantation owners/socialite, July 29, 1998

By 

Annette Carrasquillo ([e-mail] (Puerto Rico) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Eccentric Neighborhoods (Hardcover)

Rosario Ferre is an excellent story-weaver. She takes us on a magic carpet ride to the land of plantation owners and Puerto Rican socialités. Her story contains a lot of similarities between real life and fiction, and probably takes most of her experiences as the daughter of the then Governor of Puerto Rico, Luis A. Ferré, to weave her story; which makes it even more delightful. I would love to read an autobiographical book from her.