Family Lore
Ratings26
Average rating3.6
15
Ratings26
Average rating3.6
A Most Anticipated Book of 2023 from: Today.com * Time * Electric Literature * Seattle Times * Telemundo * Washington Post * HipLatina * Harper's Bazaar * Elle * AARP * Shondaland * New York Times * The Millions * LitHub From the bestselling, National Book Award–winning author Elizabeth Acevedo comes her first novel for adults, the story of one Dominican-American family told through the voices of its women as they await a gathering that will forever change their lives. Flor has a gift: she can predict, to the day, when someone will die. So when she decides she wants a living wake—a party to bring her family and community together to celebrate the long life she’s led—her sisters are surprised. Has Flor foreseen her own death, or someone else’s? Does she have other motives? She refuses to tell her sisters, Matilde, Pastora, and Camila. But 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. Spanning the three days prior to the wake, Family Lore traces the lives of each of the Marte women, weaving together past and present, Santo Domingo and New York City. Told with Elizabeth Acevedo’s inimitable and incandescent voice, this is an indelible portrait of sisters and cousins, aunts and nieces—one family’s journey through their history, helping them better navigate all that is to come.
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i appreciated this story so much and all the variety of women's issues that is told. i love elizabeth acevedo's writing but i didn't enjoy the non-linear, constantly switching perspective nature of this book.
This book wasn't bad but it was also clearly not for me. I've read 3 other books by this author and loved all of them, this one was just okay for me.
There are multiple POVs and it was hard for me to keep track of what happened to whom, when and of what actually did matter. The writing is beautiful and compelling however I can't help but feel like it was lacking an actual plot. The whole thing about the woman wanting a baby bored me half to death (it will probably resonate with some people but personally I don't care for that type of story and I found it hard not to skim).
On the plus side I really liked the name Pastoria.
Elizabeth Acevedo never disappoints me with her writing. I love the complexity of her characters and how real they always feel, and this book was no different. Being of Afro-Carribean descent myself, I always feel a connection to books following characters of similar backgrounds, despite the family being from a different island than my family is. I felt connected to the women that we follow in so many ways and it definitely elevated the reading experience for me. Elizabeth's writing is so lyrical and reads like poetry. This book reminded me of how much I love her books, and I'm excited to read anything she writes in the future.
Thank you to Ecco and NetGalley for providing me with an eBook copy to review.
Family Lore is a story of two generations of an immigrant family. Most of the family members possess unique powers, ranging wildly from the ability to predict death to having an affinity for limes. Beyond their powers though, they all also face many challenges which is where their inner strength shines through, and what the book is mostly focused on.
Throughout the book we get to know this family via mostly flashbacks as they prepare for one of the sisters' living funeral. Since this event is planned by the sister that can tell when someone will die, it makes the family face the possibility of losing her, and their own mortality. They're also each at a precipice of their own, making them face where they are in life.
Family Lore is made up of things I love: it's written by Elizabeth Acevedo, it's a family saga and it's magical realism. While I am glad I read it, and there were a lot of parts in it I really liked, I also never fully connected with it.
There are a lot of different topics handled in the book, infidelity, immigration, sexuality, infertility, and familial and romantic relationships. Acevedo handles each of these topics beautifully.
While I mostly appreciated reading their stories, my reading experience wasn't entirely smooth. I felt like it dragged in so many points that it just made me want to stop reading it altogether. I think partially this was because it's very vignette-like. If the character development or the writing were better, perhaps those might have gripped me. Basically, while there were many moving moments, I was not usually moved by them.
