Author: Julia Alvarez
Date completed: March 31, 2010
What I remember:
This is one of those books that I felt I ought to read, since it is something of a contemporary American classic. It was the first work I read by Julia Alvarez, and I wasn't that into it. (As tends to be the case with books that I select from a vague sense of obligation rather than genuine curiosity...) I didn't find it personally compelling or otherwise engaging at the time, and so put it (and Alvarez) out of my mind for almost a year.
The following winter I was on an essay-reading kick, which led me to pick up her collection Something to Declare. These personal essays were, by contrast, so compelling that I immediately went on to read two of her other novels, which I appreciated much more, being better equipped with an understanding of the author's life and history and what it meant to be Dominican-American in the 1960s and 70s. The upshot is that, despite my initial, lukewarm reaction to How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, Alvarez is currently one of my favorite authors and I am quite eager to re-read it.
Date completed: March 31, 2010
What I remember:
This is one of those books that I felt I ought to read, since it is something of a contemporary American classic. It was the first work I read by Julia Alvarez, and I wasn't that into it. (As tends to be the case with books that I select from a vague sense of obligation rather than genuine curiosity...) I didn't find it personally compelling or otherwise engaging at the time, and so put it (and Alvarez) out of my mind for almost a year.
The following winter I was on an essay-reading kick, which led me to pick up her collection Something to Declare. These personal essays were, by contrast, so compelling that I immediately went on to read two of her other novels, which I appreciated much more, being better equipped with an understanding of the author's life and history and what it meant to be Dominican-American in the 1960s and 70s. The upshot is that, despite my initial, lukewarm reaction to How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, Alvarez is currently one of my favorite authors and I am quite eager to re-read it.
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