Family Lore
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- €7.99
Publisher Description
'Beautiful prose, even-handed magic and all the pains and triumphs of intergenerational bonds' KILEY REID, author of Such A Fun Age and Come and Get It
'Undeniably beautiful' Sunday Times
Flor has a gift: she can predict, to the day, when someone will die. So when she decides to throw her own living wake, her sisters are concerned. What has she foreseen?
Planning the celebration brings further complications for the Marte family, because Flor isn’t the only person with secrets: her sisters are hiding things, too. And the next generation, cousins Ona and Yadi, face tumult of their own.
Family Lore traces the intertwining stories of five women: 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.
