The River Beyond the World: A Novel [Paperback]

Janet Peery (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 15, 1997

Luisa Cantu is a girl from a Sierra Madre mountain village. After being impregnated in a fertility ritual of ancient ofigin, she leaves Mexico to work in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas as a housemaid for Mrs. Eddie Hatch, a woman with a strong will and a narrow worldview. Their complex relationship-by turns mystical and pragmnatic, serious and comic-reveals the many ways human beings can wound one another, the nautre of love and sacrifice, and the possibility of forgiveness.

 

The River Beyond the World is a 1996 National Book Award Finalist for Fiction.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This first novel, a nominee for the 1996 National Book Award, is a different kind of family saga: two families come together in the agricultural outback around Rio Paradiso, that of the young Mexican girl Luisa and her children, and that of the affluent farmer's wife Eddie and her son Raleigh. Peery combines a straightforward narrative style with moments of lyrical, almost mystical grace and beauty. The intertwined stories of Eddie and Louisa and their children, Raleigh and Antonia, reveal the hidden currents within the most loveless and downward spiraling lives. Peery is a writer of great promise. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

The winner of a Whiting Foundation Award, short-story writer Peery (Alligator Dance) sets her first novel in the border country between Texas and Mexico, from 1944 to the present, and recounts the intertwining tales of Luisa Cantu and Edwina "Eddie" Hatch over a 50-year span. Having fled her Mexican hometown burdened by pregnancy from an ancient fertility ritual, Luisa finds employment as maid-of-all-work for petulant, wealthy Eddie Hatch, a transplanted Southern lady easily irritated by "lazy" Mexican help and her skittish, sexually uninterested husband. She and Luisa enter into an oddly intimate, if outwardly crusty relationship over the decades, during which Eddie gives birth to her only child, Raleigh (the result of a dalliance with a citrus grower) and Luisa raises her children, Gustavo and Antonia. Inevitably, Antonia and Raleigh fall in love and conceive a baby. In a typical preemptive attempt to resolve matters, self-righteous Eddie takes Antonia over the border into Mexico for an illicit abortion that never comes to pass but serves to poison Antonia's sentiments towards "Madama" Eddie forever. The story then barrels toward closure, in which Luisa and Antonia must learn to forgive Eddie's hurts and Eddie must acknowledge Luisa's importance in her old age. Peery spins an involving narrative, maintaining suspense about the central characters' relationships. At times, however, one wishes she had turned her observant eye more to the characters' inward reflections than on atmosphere; her powers of rich description invite readers to hope for the same level of intense contemplation applied to the characters' inner lives. With whatever minor flaws, however, Peery succeeds in providing the engrossing pleasure of old-fashioned storytelling.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Picador; first edition, first print edition (September 15, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312169868
• ISBN-13: 978-0312169862
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,362,320 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fine work!, July 7, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The River Beyond the World (Hardcover)

In a writing workshop I attended, Janet Peery said that every story takes place in somebody's back yard, and we like it when it's not our back yard. The Tex-Mex border region is totally unknown to me. Ms. Peery skillfully evokes the flavor of the area with Spanish terms, weather and plant details, and Eddie's fractured Spanglish. This is a fine read

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lyricism and Reality, August 4, 2000

By 

"viragonyc" (NYC, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The River Beyond the World: A Novel (Paperback)

The River Beyond the World is an amazing, amazing book. Peery is a lyrical writer, but there's a tough reality to what she writes. In my reading/interpretation, it ends up being a very moving novel about misunderstandings and miscommunications based on class, culture and age and how these differences shape the lives of women. The choices the central characters make alternately managed to choke me up with sadness, to make me seethe with rage and caused me to smile with admiration. Well worth the emotional upheaval and the time spent.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN, COMPLEX NOVEL, August 25, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Ft. Worth, TX) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The River Beyond the World: A Novel (Paperback)

In THE RIVER BEYOND THE WORLD, Janet Peery illustrates an element of human compassion for her characters that is uplifting without being cloying, an element that illustrates the human condition in a way that we as readers can internalize as a tool for interpreting the world.

The hallmarks of Peery's writing are the deceptively simple prose style she employs, and the wonderfully apt way she has of capturing dialogue and scene in brief splashes of narrative that illuminate the unspoken depths of the story.

RIVER BEYOND THE WORLD is a beautifuly written, complex novel that is fully deserving of the acclaim it has received.

Rebekah Mercer