Customer Reviews

The Good Works of Ayela Linde: A Novel in Stories

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
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I am so happy for my mom!! I think she did a splendid job. I really liked the way she described Ayela with such detail;from the wild girl in "Parasols" to the wise old widow in "The Marvolous Yellow Cage". This is truly wonderful work of fiction! Hands down!!

What a lovely, elegant, powerful book! -so beautifully written that reading it is effortless and absorbing. You feel as if youre right there with Ayela living a life along side hers. A beautiful book which I think will become a classic.

Charlotte Forbes' debut novel enthralls with quaint metaphor, showing that cows and coffee are much more than food and drink, sharing puzzle pieces of the beautiful Ayela Linde through the stories of a medley of characters, including grandchildren and teenage accomplices in debauchery. Hiding in the nooks of this novel, clothed in Forbes' mesmerizing fabric of words, revealing itself inelucatably, is the pungent truth that life is what you make of it. Forbes leaves her readers desperately wondering about the siestas between stories, and sneaking looks at the inside of the cover in hopes to get a glimpse of the face that launched these wonderful words.

I loved this book- rich with imagery and language and interesting characters, it flowed through the lives of people I came to care about. I was reminded throughout of the captivating, earthy characters I met in the works of Erdrich and Marquez. I slowed my reading toward the end, not wanting it to be over, but found the last words moved me, leaving me feeling satisfied and expanded.

Reviewed by April Sullivan for Reader Views (10/06)

As the subtitle tells us, "The Good Works of Ayele Linde" is "A Novel in Stories." This book is composed of sixteen stories told from the viewpoint of several characters. Ayele Linde is the main character, but she never tells us her own story. We read about her through the voice of her travel agent, her housekeeper, her husband, her son, her granddaughter, and other townspeople in Santa Rosalia.

Santa Rosalia is a small border town, just north of Mexico. It has the fairytale feel of a small Mexican village full of superstition. Charlotte Forbes uses well-crafted descriptions of the place and people and transports the reader to this colorful, magical world. An arrangement of parasols looks like "a flock of strange and lovely birds that had flown up from the jungle and touched down in Santa Rosalia on their way up to heaven". A cow standing in the rain has "heavy brown cow eyes that bore with dignity the burden of keeping the world awash in milk."

Most compelling are the descriptions of Ayele Linde by the people who surround her. She is described as "a black horse galloping alone through a field", "as variable as the weather", and a "woman who wore privacy like a mark across her brow even as she flitted like an Amazonian butterfly from the grand room to the patio." She was a woman hard to get close to, as Forbes carefully shows through not being able to get close enough to her own character to tell her story outright.

"The Good Works of Ayele Linde" is a portrait painted in words. Not just one portrait, but a gallery of portraits by different artists with different points of view. Charlotte Forbes writes in thick layers and textures to create vivid images -- images so vivid that I wanted to create paintings of several of the scenes. As you will see by the end of the book, I was not the only one with this reaction. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to take a step back from their own world and enter the world of Ayele Linde, even if for a brief time.

Book received free of charge.