Family Lore
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- €13.99
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- €13.99
Publisher Description
'Family Lore is full of beautiful prose, even-handed magic and all the pains and triumphs of intergenerational bonds' KILEY REID, author of Such A Fun Age
The Marte women are preparing for a gathering that will change their lives forever
Flor has a gift: she can predict, to the day, when someone will die. So when she decides to host her own living wake – bringing together her family and community to celebrate her long life – her sisters Matilde, Pastora and Camila are concerned. What has she foreseen?
But Flor isn’t the only one with a secret. Matilde has tried to hide the extent of her husband’s infidelity for years, and now must confront the true state of her marriage. Pastora – always on a mission to solve her sisters’ problems – needs to come to terms with her past. And Camila, the youngest sibling, has decided she no longer wants to be taken for granted. Alongside their struggles, the next generation of Marte women face their own tumult of family obligations, infertility, and heartache.
Spanning the three days prior to the wake, Family Lore traces the intertwining stories of these sisters and cousins, mothers and daughters, aunts and nieces, to ask the ultimate question: what does it take to live a good life, for yourself and those you love?
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
In her first novel for adults, Elizabeth Acevedo—whose The Poet X we so adored—introduces us to the Marte sisters. We spend three days with the Dominican American family in their native New York City where secrets abound and one sister, Flor, is planning a wake. Plot twist: it’s her own. Flor, the second-born sister, is a clairvoyant and can predict (within 24 hours) someone’s death. She refuses to tell her sisters, Matilde (the eldest, and a virtuoso dancer with marriage troubles), Pastora (“blessed” with a gift to unlock the secrets of others) and Camila (the youngest sister) whether it’s her own death she’s planning for. Narrated by Flor’s daughter, Ono, Family Lore is a dazzling portrait of a family with dark secrets around every corner.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The colorful adult debut from Acevedo (The Poet X) explores the bonds connecting the women of a Dominican family in New York City, some of whom have magical powers. Flor Marte, the clairvoyant second-born sister, whose dreams tell her when others are about to die, begins planning her own wake, while her older sister, Matilde, a brilliant dancer unhappily married to the unfaithful Rafa, nurses an attraction to her instructor's son. Their widowed younger sister, Pastora, knows about Rafa's infidelity and Matilde's crush on a younger man because she has a magical ability to perceive people's secrets; her interference in Matilde's life has dire consequences. Flor's daughter, Ona, who narrates, claims she can regulate her menstrual cycle ("your popola has magic?" asks her aunt Camila, the youngest of the four). There's also Pastora's daughter, Yadi, whose old beau has just been released from prison while she prepares the food for Flor's wake. Though the various magical elements aren't very well developed, Acevedo is brilliant at portraying the women's love and loyalty for one another. The author's fans will eat this up.
