Customer Reviews

Victoire: My Mother's Mother

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Victoire is one of the best novels about the French colonial experience in the Caribbean. Maryse Conde focuses here on the generations after slavery, especially those individuals and families who pushed themselves up from peasantry, isolation, and illiteracy and into an emerging black middle class. They called themselves "les grandes negres" and built their new social class upon money to some extent, but especially upon literacy, respectability, and contact with the "mother country", France--not Africa. Conde takes on a relatively obscure era and brings it to life. The title character personifies the ways that natal alienation (Dr. Orlando Patterson's phrase) could continue for women of color, well beyond slavery's end.
Another reviewer complains about the passages in French. While I have not studied French, it was quite clear to me that Conde puroposely includes many passages in creole. I was fascinated by creole's distinctiveness from metropolitan French. While I may have missed some details, the French and creole passages never proved an obstacle in following the plot and illustrated the class and cultural differences that typified the era.
A strong novel on the historic black experience. Should interest fans of Toni Morrison and Andrea Levy.

"Victoire" has solidified my reason for loving Maryse Condé. I love her style of writing, I felt like a fly on the wall throughout the entire novel. Well done.

It was just okay. I think the book went back and forth too much in the French language for someone who doesn't understand French. If there was a translation line, it would have been more helpful. It was uncomfortable to read and not know what the author was talking about. The story of her grandmother was interesting and the settings she described helped me visualize the scenes. Especially somewhere i've never visited. However, it was a good one time read.