28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Exciting Debut Historical Novel!, July 27, 2008
This review is from: The Seamstress: A Novel (Hardcover)
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Many other fine reviews here have provided excellent and very detailed synopses of this book. As stated, the actions took place in the time frame between 1928 and 1935 in Brazil and follow the lives of two sisters whose lives diverged in their late teens due to fate and circumstance.
The author wove the stories together along with the major events of the times in a very effective manner. The chapters were each relatively long, however, I particularly liked the fact that these long chapters were broken up into multiple sub-chapters. Each chapter focused on one sister or the other in an alternating manner. I was almost immediately swept up into the lives and adventures of each sister.
Frances De Pontes Peebles did a superb job, in my opinion, of keeping the mystery and the suspense alive throughout the book by dropping little tidbits of information. Like a trail of bread crumbs I just had to follow to find out what the circumstances were that had led to this or that development. As an example, in the prologue, Emilia's husband, Degas, is dead and the family is in mourning. Yet, in Emila's story we come to know Degas - his fears and his foibles - only gradually. Similar instances are expertly woven throughout.
Emilia intrigued me, nothing at the core of her existence, her horrible burden of guilt and remorse at having failed her younger sister, was ever allowed to escape for long past the placid, fashionable face that she presented to the world. She became a guiding force within the Women's Auxiliary while never actually becoming acceptable to them. The politics here was as tricky and risky for Emilia as the scrublands were for Luzia.
Antonio, "The Hawk", Luzia's husband was a dark, exciting character. He had an iron will and a resolve that was awe-inspiring. His men and Luzia, dubbed "The Seamstress" because of her fine needle skills, followed and obeyed him unquestioningly and without reservation. His tutorage channeled Luzia's natural outspokenness into the assured, charismatic leader that she later became. Then, the Seamstress no longer sewed cloth but rather she kept her group stitched together through the strength of her personality and fortitude.
I loved the way the characters grew and developed throughout the story. The characters came alive for me as I read about the revolution, the drought, and most especially how difficult simple existence was in the vast inland badlands even during the best of times.
I have never read any book, historical or otherwise, set in Brazil. I am glad to have read this one as I found it to be entertaining as well as enlightening. With The Seamstress the author stitches the events and people together almost flawlessly in this well-written adventure set in a fascinating historical period.
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good beach/vacation/lost-weekend read, July 21, 2008
This review is from: The Seamstress: A Novel (Hardcover)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
The book is literary historical fiction set in 1930s Brasil. Two sisters from a small town are separated in their late teens--one taken by brigands, the other driven to pursue her ambition to own a house with a tiled kitchen. They can only follow each other's exploits through the newspapers at a time when Brasil undergoes a massive political upheaval and turn towards fascism. The story unfolds in alternating sections, overlapping in time, following each sister as she tries to navigate in a new environment's dangerous rules, while haunted by her sister's memory.
At its base, this book is about the relationship between two sisters as they change and grow and find (or don't find) what they were looking for. Everything you can imagine happens here--marriage, betrayal, love, death, secrets; and some of the best charged dialogue written in recent years. (Every time Dona Dulce opens her mouth, you'll wince!)
When I read novels of this sort--thick, dense, and inviting me into an entirely strange new world (just as Luzia and Emilia find themselves in new terrains, so does the reader)--I want to be completely swept away. At times, Peebles succeeds, making the caatinga or the persnickety society of Recife come to life. At other times, however, the 'fictive dream' seems muddled by slightly too-thin characterization. I never quite got my heart around Emilia--she starts out as more than a merely narcissistic self-absorbed silly teenager (weren't we all, once?), and seems downright mean from the get-go. I guess I never really forgave her that, nor did I see or understand what Luzia loved about her sister. And Emilia's actions change too much without explanation. Wanting to marry for love and profit, she too easily gives up on the 'love' part, and seems entirely sexless and bland and emotionally dead to others, as if love for her sister has taken every scrap of affection from her heart.
The book tries hard to be 'literary'--a bit too hard for my tastes, but I'm a literature professor, so I tend to dislike being bludgeoned with symbolism. But if you're an armchair English major, there's much to occupy your brain about this book. Themes one can follow with profit--heads, measurement, blindness/sight, barrenness/fertility, religion/science, modernity/tradition, city/country, memory/present reality....you get the idea. It elevates this book above the usual run of 'heartwarming sister stories' or 'escapist historical fiction', but may turn one off if one prefers one's symbolism served with a side of subtlety. The Prologue is so fraught with obvious "These Are Like Totally Meaningful" items that it seems topheavy and in my mind distracts from the storyline.
One other thing that may irk some readers--Peebles *crams* you with Brasilian words (with no gesture on how to pronounce them). That's fine, insofar as it creates that illusion of place. But she blows the whole deal when she names the chief brigand The Hawk, and has him buy stationery with an engraved 'H' (for 'Hawk'). (Similarly, Little Ear's initials, in the book, are, L.E.) The Portuguese word for 'hawk' is 'falcao,' which does NOT begin with an H. She could just as easily have named in 'Falcao' with no loss to the reader, and no idiotic slip of continuity. And do you wanna bet "little ear" in Portuguese or Brasilian slang doesn't begin with and L and an E? It seemed out of place in a world so committed to stuffing my brain and tripping my tongue in foreign words and phrases, and really broke that nice escapist illusion I was hoping for.
A good read, that, if you're not an overly fussy literature professor, will absolutely entertain. If you ARE an overly fussy lit professor, it's still enjoyable and much better worth your time than many things out there.
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24 of 28 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A good book deserves a detailed review!, July 24, 2008
This review is from: The Seamstress: A Novel (Hardcover)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
Overview:
Here we have a novel which takes us far beyond the parameters of `women's reading'. This is an epic tale of Brazil, of interest to men and women alike. The story is conveyed through an insightful quilt-work of dichotomies and we get some great advice along the way, ergo: "Never trust a strange tape!" I can assure you now that you'll have to read through to near the end of this first-rate story to fully appreciate that sage little jot of counsel.
Descriptive Summary:
An actuality clearly imparted to readers of this book is that children are the same everywhere, regardless of a chronological era or of geography. After the Prologue we encounter the two dos Santos girls existing in derisory circumstances under the vigilant eye of a strict old aunt in a scrublands village of 1920s and `30s Northeastern Brazil: Taquaritinga. Early on, the younger and more tomboyish of the sisters, Luzia, experiences a great personal tragedy which defines her life's course - she falls from a mango tree while mischievously pilfering fruit and the impact of the fall leads to a minor brain injury as well as leaving her with a permanently disfigured arm. Due to a poorly-set bone by a local incompetent, the elbow becomes locked for life at a ninety-degree angle.
Not long after this, while Luzia is at school and defending her elder sister, Emília, from a youthful male antagonist, the bully orally retaliates by cleverly but brutally dubbing Luzia as "Victrola," thus comparing her pathetically angled arm to the brass playing arm of the now ancient but well-remembered, hand-cranked, trumpet-speakered RCA Victor phonograph. Tragically, this sobriquet sticks region-wide and in every frequent instance in which Victrola is subsequently so addressed by the town-folk she is re-reminded of the unjust cruelty of human society. This appalling emotional exploitation generates a cumulative and injurious psychological effect on her. As I said, kids are the same worldwide, the larger point here being that the reader is immediately drawn into an empathetic relationship with the book's chief character. Is it not true that we have all been on either the rendering or the receiving end of such regrettable comments during our childhood school days?
The venerable Aunt Sofia, who takes charge of the girls subsequent to the untimely death of the mother, and ultimately of the drunken shell of a father, was renowned as the top seamstress of her community. She makes it her business to see that her two wards will live to enjoy, if not a regal social status in the town, then at least an honorable one by teaching them all she knows of her craft. Aunt Sofia also sends the girls to a school of sorts where they receive formal sewing lessons on the new and complex Singer sewing machines. While at the school, Emília additionally gets her first lesson in the incongruities of love.
Both girls are okay with their aunt's agenda except that Emília secretly resolves to forsake her impecunious home place for a better life in the big city, hopefully with a distinguished husband who will provide for her wants and needs. This wallpaper sets the stage for the reader to digest the larger focus of the book which is Brazil's populist political direction and the ensuing social turmoil. In hindsight, we of course know that the rich and powerful nearly always eventually prevail in this world; however, the author allows us to discount that nuance for the moment by arming the reader with the perspectives of the region's poor folks and we can thus take on their considerable pain.
Subsequent to the death of their aunt the two sisters go their separate ways, Emília clearly by design, but with Luzia/Victrola were not so certain. Luzia is taken captive by bandit cangaceiros but in the back of the reader's mind there remains a tiny notion that she's actually fleeing from the heinous metaphor of Victrola. The two girls quickly evolve to noteworthy positions in their respective, contrasting environments - one in the wilds as a cangaceiro and one in urban surroundings where she can design and market fashionable dresses.
Luzia learns from and comes to worship her new soul mate, Antônio Teixeira, aka "The Hawk" (a cangaceiro leader), while Emília becomes dwarfed and repressed in the household of her in-laws, the Coelho family. Her new father-in-law, a medical doctor and rabid populist, is convinced that phrenology holds all the answers to reversing the problem of the nation's criminal activity. His wife, Dona Dulce, is a neurotic despot and minor masochist whose life focus is appearance rather than substance. Emília's husband seems nice enough but his secrets are truly dark ones and extorting his own wife becomes a personal imperative.
Three competing factions become the primary players of the novel - the cangaceiros (bandits) and their sympathizers; the colonels (rural land barons) along with their minions and supporters, and; Celestino Gomes, Green Party populist, and his supporters within the urban regions of Brazil. Before it's all over, alliances change and re-change given the political winds of any particular window in time.
Think of the cangaceiros as a "noir" strain of Robin Hood's Merry Men. Paradoxically, the cangaceiros also steal, rob, and murder when it is in either their personal or political interests. Some cangaceiros appear as outright thugs while a lesser percentage wield tenuously ethical personalities which generate a more Arthurian view of them in the eyes of the local poverty-stricken class. Compared to robber-bands observable in other cultures, the cangaceiros are portrayed as somewhat unique in that they integrate women into key roles of their often nefarious activities, such actions which are more often associated with men.
The colonels manifest a certain level of stability in Brazil's wilder regions where the police and military presence is virtually non-existent. They emerge as a law unto themselves, frequently profiteering on the backs of the pitiable indigenous residents of these socially repressed regions. Thus, when an individual of this elite faction is either robbed or killed by a cangaceiro, a silent "Hurrah!" emanates from the exploited souls who have previously been beholden to him.
Two sub-plots provide additional platforms within the novel, the first being the Brazilian Presidential election. Gomes, an extreme populist of The First Water provides hopeful promise for both the financially repressed and the suffragette populaces. The aftermath of the election is a profound facet of the story. The second and lesser sub-plot involves the global spider web of economic impacts resultant of the 1929 New York Stock Market crash.
The story's actualities and emotions are as momentous and as vast as Brazil's back-country. They include, but are not limited to, love, fear, prayer, death, intimidation, hope, revulsion, lust, violence, torture, redemption, deceit, repression, blackmail, retribution, satisfaction, and sexual conduct of more than one brand.
Evaluative Summary:
"The Seamstress" is to Brazil what
Gone with the Wind was to America in terms of cultural, political, and historical paradigms. This lengthy work and intellectually clever story is nearly epic in its scope. There are two ways to tell a story. One is to generate either a real or an imaginary picture board and to then devise an outline for relating the story. Then the tale is conveniently plugged into the design. The second way, the superior method, is to simply focus on telling the story and let the chips fall where they will. "The Seamstress" is a product of this latter method, albeit the author shrewdly heightened the suspense level by episodically breaking up one facet of action, diverting us to yet another at key intervals.
There are niggling little corners in the text of this book which will alert the more analytical readers that the work was possibly written by a person not U.S.-born; however, this caveat is not at all a negative feature from my view -- conversely, in this instance I found the writing style to be quite refreshing which provides some much-needed relief from the glut of insipid prose to which we are sometimes compelled to endure in contemporary fiction.
The author's acuity for the value of pertinent historical facts, in parallel with the main story, lends added interest to this tale. Some of these actualities introduce inventions of the period including the hydroplane, the Graf Zeppelin, and the zipper! The 1929 Stock Market Crash as well as a tiny mention of a troubling figure rising to power in Germany also add to reader interest.
Some readers have a concern with the presence of graphic language and violence -- yes, it is present. But the reader is not bombarded with excessive profanity or gore. These key elements were clearly not injected for the sole purpose of generating sensation. All of these instances are quite appropriately and tastefully conveyed, and each serves a specific purpose in the holistic illumination of the story. Along those same lines of thought, while the novel seems quite lengthy at 642 pages, I would assert that every sentence yields value to the overall work. This novel is intelligently-written and will withstand the test of time. In fact, if I have a problem with the book at all it's that I wish it were lengthier.
The work is not flawless; however, the couple of factual errors which I did encounter left me with a personal assurance that the author is quite human. As a result I felt more connected with the story and its characters. I analogized these minor imperfections to the enigma of Countess Rostova's "lost"...
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