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Curbstone Press, paperback, 978091530947 |
FAMILY ALBUM
Translated from the Spanish by Amanda Hopkinson
Reviewed by Joyce Nickel
Family Album, by Salvadorian-Nicaraguan author Claribel Alegría, is a slim trio of novellas that touch on the lives of three very different expatriate Latin American women. In "The Talisman," Karen's father rescues her from the abusive home of her mother and boyfriend in Florida and dumps her in an expensive convent school in California. She does poorly there because she is still grappling with the events of her earlier life. When Karen is encouraged to adopt a spiritual advisor, as an act of defiance she picks the nastiest nun at the school. Sister Mary Ann is prudish and pious, but titillated by Karen's stories. She assigns several Catholic "cures": penance through scullery duty, repressing emotions by saying the rosary, rather than working out her memories through artistic expression, and finally, corporal mortification through wearing a metal cilice. Karen rejects all of these—she admits to no religious feeling. On one hand, she seems to want to just get through the boring school years, but as the story progresses, we see that she gets a thrill out of the nefarious events in her life. Karen plays Sister Mary Ann, but the nun is a wily opponent and this struggle of wills comes to a creepy, surprising end. The second piece in the collection, "Family Album," is a story of Ximena, a Nicaraguan woman living in Paris in the late 1970s with her French husband. The appearance of her cousin Armando and his recollections of Sandinista revolutionary experiences unleashes a complex web of memories for Ximena. Alegría weaves a Nicaraguan history lesson into this story, which is the most political of the collection. The third novella is set on the Mediterranean island of Mallorca. The strangest things happen in the community of Deyá, which the locals call the "Village of God and the Devil." It is an ancient village, where "the youngsters die in their seventies and the majority continue on well into their nineties." Marcia and her husband settle here to recuperate after his breakdown: she enjoys the climate and gardens; he thinks it's the best place to escape the approaching global Apocalypse. Extraordinary, unexplainable events occur regularly here, and both the local and foreign residents speculate whether the cause is the ferrous oxide in the mountains, electromagnetic forces, a devil's triangle effect, or a philosopher's stone.
With the European and North American settings, the stories in Family Album are somewhat of a
departure for this author, best known for her poetry and other writings that illuminate life
in Central America. Throughout her writing career, Alegría has always been politically active
in El Salvador and Nicaragua, favouring a commitment to non-violent resistance. In 2006, she was awarded
the highly prestigious Neustadt International Prize for Literature, which recognizes her entire
body of work. Read a biography of Claribel Alegría on World Literature Today's Neustadt International Prize for Fiction's page.(scroll down to 2006 Prize) |