Flora's Suitcase [Hardcover]

Dalia Rabinovich (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 19, 1998

When we launched our "Write the Bestseller" contest, we couldn't have imagined that we'd discover a talent like Dalia Rabinovich. Written in the best magic realism tradition, the novel chronicles the lives of David and Flora Grossenberg, a Jewish couple from Cincinnati who move to Colombia to join David's Russian emigre family. With Flora pregnant and David desperate to escape his odd and overbearing relations, the young couple moves away from the family. They discover a mysterious inhabitant: Bolivariana, a wizened old woman who claims to he the illegitimate daughter of Colombia's national hero, Simon Bolivar.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Rabinovich's quirky, wry and perceptive debut won HarperCollins's "Best Seller" contest to launch a first-time novelist. Her narrative focuses on an initially hopeful Jewish-American woman who leaves Cincinnati in 1933 and moves with her quietly domineering husband and their baby to Colombia, where she copes with culture shock and his obstreperous, Russian-Jewish emigre family. Three more children and a quarter century, later, Flora Grossenberg has been worn down by her manipulative husband, a textile manufacturer, by his venomous family and by Colombia itself, portrayed here as a deeply superstitious, backward country beset by endless civil wars. By the late 1950s, when Flora makes her first return trip to the U.S., she is full of suppressed rage, stifled by the wrong choices she made by bowing to her husband's will. Rabinovich, who was born in Colombia and now teaches writing at Brooklyn College, invests this exotic adventure with mordant feminist observations of cross-cultural misunderstandings, but her characters are too often caricatures (e.g., Bolivariana, the Grossenbergs' wizened, defiant maid, who claims to be freedom-fighter Simon Bolivar's illegitimate daughter; and Harold, Flora's eccentric brother-in-law, obsessed with mangos, who blows off his toe with a rifle). Flora's suitcase, symbol of her hope that she will someday escape her frustrating life, in the end becomes a poignant metaphor for her failure to do so. Editors, Sharon Bowers, Fiona Hallowell; agent, Jimmy Vines.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

After her marriage in the 1930s, Flora Grossenberg expects to settle into a conventional Jewish American life in Cincinnati. But her husband, David, moves them to faraway Colombia to join his Russian emigre family. Flora's attempts to settle into this tangled culture are frustrated by David's three meddling sisters. And when Flora convinces David to move into their own house, it turns out to be secretly occupied by an elderly woman who predicts the future and crosses freely between the real world and Flora's dreams. The members of the town and David's family figure in a series of highly unusual incidents?at times mysterious and humorous?that tie into the day-to-day affairs of Flora's growing family. Eventually, Flora's original vision of family life seems successfully transplanted to Colombia, against a backdrop of colorful episodes that would never have taken place in Cincinnati. Winner of the publisher's "Best Seller" contest for a first novel, this is recommended for all collections.?David A. Berona, Univ. of New England, Biddleford, ME
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Harper; 1st edition (August 19, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060191376
• ISBN-13: 978-0060191375
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,676,836 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 Engaging and evocative, filled with vivid images, October 19, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Flora's Suitcase (Hardcover)

Flora's Suitcase provides the essential experience for the reader of fiction--it transports you to another world and fills it with fascinating people and places. The story moves seamlessly from straightforward narrative to a flowing dream logic where anything is possible, and where characters and places reveal their mysteries in unexpected ways.

The writing is both colorful and economical. I found it fast moving but rich in detail. If you enjoy Garcia-Marquez or Cynthia Ozick, or value new, interesting literary voices, I happily recommend this book.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Rabinovich's debut shows she's a writer worth watching, November 24, 1999

By 

Cityview (Des Moines, Iowa) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Flora's Suitcase: A Novel (Paperback)

In light of the ever-raging immigration debate, "Flora's Suitcase" could not be published at a better time. The locales, conditions and ethnicities may be different than those of today, yet this is a beautifully personal, instructive immigrant tale that defies time. Flora is a woman in 1930s Cincinnati. Though she owns a bright spark of independence, she nonetheless marries Dovid after a brief, rather unromantic courtship. Dovid is a man of time and place. His extended family is forced to flee Stalinist Russia, a migration that eventually takes the extended Grossenberg family to Columbia. It's a sorry lot for Flora. She's stuck in a Third World country with a remote husband, a growing family and a pool of Grossenberg sisters who not only reject her independence, but attempt to subvert her because of it. Flora must fight these conditions and the restrictions on women to find her freedom. In some ways, "Flora's Suitcase" is another chapter in the lonely, oppressed women's genre. In the capable hands of author Dalia Rabinovich, however, it becomes much more than that. Intriguing about Rabinovich is her ability to meld so many different styles and genres seamlessly. "Flora's Suitcase" is part immigrant tale, part Jewish saga, part chick story and part Third World exploration. Rabinovich throws in a dose of magical realism to boot, then wraps it all in the voice of Jewish classics. What remains is a spartan, detached narrative that packs emotional punch. This style allows the story to roam freely. Whether Flora is being mistaken by peasants for a saint, or being asked by Dovid to give their daughter to a childless relative, Rabinovich never falls prey to melodrama, nor do such spectacular events seem implausible. This is a skilled new writer very much worth following.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderfully reminiscent of Marquez ... Chagall ... and more!, September 4, 1998

By 

Diane Ring ([e-mail]) (Ashland, Massachusetts) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Flora's Suitcase (Hardcover)

I find it interesting that the reader from Virginia was reminded of a Monet painting, as I was strongly reminded of Chagall's colorful and fanciful depictions of the mystical aspect to Jewish village life. Flora's Suitcase paints a lush and evocative portrait of a family's struggles and triumphs that relates to all of our families' collective past, present -- and, I would suspect, future. Ms. Rabinovich has a keen eye for the subtle ironies that cross cultures to describe the human condition, and she describes it in a way that will be enjoyable and enriching to all.

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