Customer Reviews

Saving the World (Shannon Ravenel Books)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Julia Alvarez' new novel was a Book Sense pick of the month. I've never been quite satisfied by her earier books, but after dedicating five months to the Spanish-language telenovela "Alborada", I was in the mood for something at least partially set in the same early 19th century time period. I gave "Saving the World" a try.

What a fabulous surprise. "Saving the World" is not without flaws, but it is a marvelous read, completely satisfying and highly recommended.

There's a parallel story structure, one modern, one historical. In this case the historical one is the most compelling. Isabel is the director of a Spanish orphanage, who is approached by Dr. Francisco Balmis, who asks her to help him carry smallpox vaccine to the new world. This will be done by vaccinating one boy, then transferring the live vaccine from one boy to the next until they reach their destination and begin a vaccination program. Moved by Dr. Balmis' drive, Isabel agrees. She also agrees because she lost her family in the smallpox epidemic that left her disfigured.

And then you have Alma, who is supposed to be working on a Dominican family saga novel but who instead is spending her time reading about Isabel. Her husband Richard is going to the Dominican Republic to work on an environmental project while she remains at home in Vermont. That's the plan, anyway, but before the novel's end Alma will also cross the waters to try to rescue the mission of a visionary man.

Isabel's fantastic, little-known story is the more gripping. Crammed on tiny ships with rowdy little boys, touchy adult men, and bouts of seasickness, she keeps her eyes on the prize and helps the others focus in that direction as well. Alma is depressed and in trouble with her publisher, who is getting tired of waiting for this saga novel and may want the advance back. You want to shake Alma, but who hasn't used that diversionary tactic of putting too much energy into the wrong thing? She allows herself more tempest-tossed by life than Isabel, a woman who faces real tempest-tossing in a small vessel on a vast and unknowable sea.

How much you like this novel will depend on how well you're able to accept Alma. Just ride these sections and pretty soon, you'll be swept up.

After reading the wonderful "In the Time of the Butterflies" I eagerly picked up Alvarez' new novel. Here we have two paralell stories, and Alvarez betrays early on her real interest in the historical. First, we are introduced to Alma, a novelist in a black mood with a bad case of writer's block. Instead of concentrating on her Hispanic family saga, she holds off her publisher and agent and dips into the fascinating story of Isabel, an amazing woman of the early 19th century. Alma has a loving husband, good friends and a successful career, and Alvarez' attempts to portray her "crisis" didn't ring true to me. Alma sends her husband off alone to the Dominican Republic, despite his begging her to go, and then spends hours second-guessing herself, and using the illness of her elderly neighbor Helen as an excuse not to go. Helen's crazy son and daughter-in-law, who style themselves as ethical terrorists, made no sense to me.

On the other hand, the real-life story of Isabel was gripping. After barely surviving but losing her entire family to smallpox, Isabel takes the job of running an orphanage. Scarred for life, there is no other option left to her. Then she is approached by Don Francisco with a remarkable proposal--take any boy who has never been exposed to smallpox and begin a journey to the new world. The boys would be vaccinated in sequence, in the hopes of keeping the virus alive during the long journey--at the time there was no way to store and transmit the vaccine other than by live carriers. Isabel's deeply buried spirit grabs the chance to leave her shut-in existence. This part of the book is based on history, and the mission saved thousands of lives.

I couldn't help but find Alma's troubles trivial compared to Isabel's dramatic story. Isabel constantly worries about her own future and that of her boys, but her concern is real and realistically portrayed--this is a woman with no options in traditional Spanish society, and she has jumped off a cliff without much of a safety net beneath her. Alma's mid-life crisis, the illness of her friend, and her separation from Richard pale in comparison, and the dramatic ending of Alma's story doesn't help much.

I'd rather Alvarez had focused on Isabel and her remarkable story--the mission was flawed in some ways, but it ultimately meant a lot to many people, while Richard's work in the Dominican Republic is only one more example of well-intentioned first world projects gone awry.

I am an avid reader of Julia Alvarez. I collect first-editions of her novels and poetry collections.

However, I had to force myself to finish this one. I thoroughly enjoyed the story of Isabel but each time one of her chapters would end, I'd suffer through another one about Alma. I'd put down the book for days on end and have to make myself pick it up again.

I'd love to see Alvarez try again and write a story about the Spanish Royal Philanthropic Expedition with nothing else to distract from it.

If you're interested in Julia Alvarez, try "In the Time of Butterflies" or "Garcia Girls" instead. Skip this one.

I too scooped up this book eagerly pleased Alvarez had a new release.

The stories both captivated me. However only the story of Isabel kept my interest and rang true in a romaticized way. Alma's story, while a page turner (almost like a car wreck so painfully awful to read but you can't help but not turn away), started to a little too overly dramatic and silly. And when her story climaxed I was left thinking "That was it?" Some of the lose ends with Helen, Mickey and Hannah could have been tied up a bit better--or developed more to make the ends that they did have seem more statisfying.

And after reading Alvarez's other books, I was a bit disheartened by what I perceived as a disconnect from the DR.

While I browsed through a bookstore, the subject of this novel caught my attention: the story of a Spanish doctor in the 1800's who sets out on an expedition to bring the smallpox vaccine to the Spanish colonies around the world. Having discovered that the virus from which the vaccine is to be made must be transported live and cultured sequentially, he solicits young boys from an orphanage to be his first line of carriers. The rectoress of the orphanage agrees to let the boys go only if she is permitted to accompany them to care for them. Parallel to this plot is a modern day story of Alma Huebing, a Latina novelist for whom the 200 year old story becomes a source of inspiration. Her husband Richard, not unlike Dr. Francisco Balmis, goes off to work in a health center in the Dominican Republic, dispensing AIDS medication. While the stories are not equally compelling, it's interesting to see the influence that Dona Isabel's life has over Alma's. This is a well-crafted novel that kept my interest in both plot lines alike.

If you've read Ahab's Wife and liked it then this if for you. However, if you read Ahab's Wife and thought it unbelievable, pretentious etc... then don't bother reading this book. I admit it; I was hooked to start. Alma a woman approaching or in the throes of menopause struggling to write a book, a married to Richard who works for a do-good corporation that helps unite the down-trodden with the means to provide a sustainable future entertaining. Throw in some kooky friends (Tera - the vigilante, the peace riot organizer) and the good neighbor, Helen, who is dying and it was okay. Then we have the story of Isabel, the historical figure who accompanied the Royal expedition to rid the New World of Small Pox. A noble and highly successful endeavour. Initially Isabel is fine, she is informative, prehaps a bit overdramatic about her loss of faith, her disfigurement etc...but entertaining. Then she becomes like Ahab's wife, the sustainer of the mission, the one who can calm the children, or still the director's violence and his self-importance so the mission is not lost. She deplores slavery and reaches out to the slaves they purchase to insure their mission carries on, she knows how to read, how to write, she is a diplomat behind the fiery director, the mother to the motherless orphans, securing them all homes, falling ill herself so the mission will continue. It all becomes too much to the point that you wish to say enough, enough. I am reminded of a quote from a famous author who said at times he struggles to keep reading when the story is so poor, the character so self-important. And midway through the book this is the case, Isabel is so full of herself and Alma too so wrapped up in her misery (which is of her own creating) that I just wanted it to end so I could say - I finished, it's over.

Saving the World (Shannon Ravenel Books) is made up of two stories. First we have the novelist Alma, depressed and a few years overdue with her latest manuscript. Her publisher and agent phone regularly to ask about the family saga she is contracted to write; Alma lies about her progress and whiles away her time writing a different story. Her husband, Richard, is a project manager at a company funding third-world initiatives; when he has the chance to front a project in Alma's native Dominican Republic, she refuses to go with him--until he is taken hostage in a revolt against the AIDS research being conducted at the clinic run by Richard's aid organization.

The second story is the one Alma is writing. She had become intrigued by a little-known 1804 adventure: the Spanish Royal Philanthropic Expedition of the Vaccine. Charles IV of Spain commissioned a physician, Francisco Xavier de Balmis, to take the newly-discovered smallpox vaccine to the Spanish colonies of the New World; Balmis sailed with two dozen orphan boys and their guardian, Isabel, and grew the serum from one boy's inoculation to the next during the voyage. Alma brings Isabel's trials and relationships to life in this, the more interesting part of the book.

Readers often respond well to novels that contain stories within stories. Some involve literary mysteries, such as THE DAUGHTER OF TIME by Josephine Tey, or the brilliant POSSESSION: A ROMANCE by A.S. Byatt. Sometimes the main story is simply framed by a narrator, as in Emily Bronte's WUTHERING HEIGHTS. Whatever the format, the two stories are generally connected by some linking principle.

In SAVING THE WORLD, that linking principle feels thinly drawn. Both Alma and Isabel are associated with men whose work may exploit innocent victims in the name of a greater good, but there is not enough bridging the two centuries. In Alma's world, at least, there are too many loosely-drawn characters and questions left unanswered. The reader has little sense of Alma actually writing Isabel's story, nor is it easy to understand what motivates her actions with her friends and husband. At the very end of her story Alma finds strength and resolve; it would have been a more satisfying read if she had done so earlier.

Like Alma, Julia Alvarez was drawn to writing about the Expedition of the Vaccine (which is a real historical incident). This, to me, was the more successful of the two stories. Four stars for the royal voyage, three for Alma; do the math and round to four, but only if you don't need all the loose ends tied up in your novels.

Linda Bulger, 2009

Saving the world combines two stories. One is the fascinating story of a woman carrying live vaccines in the fragile bodies of small children across the world, with the dull boring and tiring story of a writer. Isabel and Alma are two women separated by hundreds of years. On one side the story of Isabel, moving from an Orphanage in Spain all the way to Latin America and Asia and back to Mexico mothering vaccine carrying children, captures the reader and transports us to the times where `the sun in Spanish territory never sat'. On the other side, Alma, a writer with a blockage is so boring that you might as well skip the pages to figure out what Isabel is endeavouring. The rating of the book should be sepparated into a 5 for Isabel's story and a 1 for Alma's.

I read this book in Spanish, not knowing it had been translated from English. After reading the first couple of chapters, I realized I was reading a translation. The translation was ok, but not great.

The parallel story line does not work well. Alma is self-centered and her concerns are trivial. Isabel's story, however, is gripping, particularly if you are a history buff. I wished that the author would have focused only on the story of the Royal Expedition. It would have made for a much more interesting novel. Every time I finished a chapter about Isabel,I felt disappointed that I would have to plow through a chapter about Alma before being able to continue Isabel's story.

I have never felt so inspired to write a review. I generally feel obligated to finish books that I purchase, but I am really struggling with this one. I am an avid reader and have probably read close to 8 books in the last 3 months. Some of them very enjoyable. However......