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jennyyates's review
4.0
This intimate, authentic first-person novel pulled me in from the beginning. The narrator is Luisa Sanchez, a woman who has always lived in the margins between several worlds.
The first part of the book tells of her growing up on a little Caribbean island where the principle crop is sugar cane, and everything moves in sync with the cycle of harvesting and processing the cane. All the people are poor, but nature provides enough for everyone to eat. The only exception to the general poverty is the family who lives in the walled house, the owners of the cane fields. Luisa’s grandmother lives in that house, but does not acknowledge her, because Luisa’s mother was a servant there.
When Luisa is still young, her father moves the family to New York City, and they live in a barrio. Her father, born to privilege but disinherited by his family, tries to survive in the city, but it is Luisa’s mother who works steadily, as she always has. And when Luisa can drop out of school, she works too, choosing the same life as her mother, that of a servant.
Luisa’s more ambitious friend Ellen tries to persuade her to take another path, but Luisa finds that a servant’s life gives her a way of disengage from everything around her. After her mother dies, she moves out of her father’s house, and enjoys the freedom to live her own life. Her clients teach her the many different ways that people can handle abundance.
The author is very adept in writing about Luisa’s experience with love, marriage and motherhood. She sticks to Luisa’s point of view, but we still understand the way her new husband misunderstands her, and constantly tries to wean her from what he sees as her peasant ways. She is never really allowed to be who she is, and when the marriage ends and she goes back to her work as a servant, she is still invisible, a prop in the lives of others.
The novel ends when Luisa goes back on a visit to the Caribbean island where she was born. She has been fantasizing about this since she left, seeing it as a way to reclaim something that was hers. But nothing remains of her history there either – except something she doesn’t really want. But as she loosens this last tie, she realizes that she has come to the end of her days as a servant.
The first part of the book tells of her growing up on a little Caribbean island where the principle crop is sugar cane, and everything moves in sync with the cycle of harvesting and processing the cane. All the people are poor, but nature provides enough for everyone to eat. The only exception to the general poverty is the family who lives in the walled house, the owners of the cane fields. Luisa’s grandmother lives in that house, but does not acknowledge her, because Luisa’s mother was a servant there.
When Luisa is still young, her father moves the family to New York City, and they live in a barrio. Her father, born to privilege but disinherited by his family, tries to survive in the city, but it is Luisa’s mother who works steadily, as she always has. And when Luisa can drop out of school, she works too, choosing the same life as her mother, that of a servant.
Luisa’s more ambitious friend Ellen tries to persuade her to take another path, but Luisa finds that a servant’s life gives her a way of disengage from everything around her. After her mother dies, she moves out of her father’s house, and enjoys the freedom to live her own life. Her clients teach her the many different ways that people can handle abundance.
The author is very adept in writing about Luisa’s experience with love, marriage and motherhood. She sticks to Luisa’s point of view, but we still understand the way her new husband misunderstands her, and constantly tries to wean her from what he sees as her peasant ways. She is never really allowed to be who she is, and when the marriage ends and she goes back to her work as a servant, she is still invisible, a prop in the lives of others.
The novel ends when Luisa goes back on a visit to the Caribbean island where she was born. She has been fantasizing about this since she left, seeing it as a way to reclaim something that was hers. But nothing remains of her history there either – except something she doesn’t really want. But as she loosens this last tie, she realizes that she has come to the end of her days as a servant.