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摘要
摘要
Flora's Suitcase marks the auspicious debut of an original new voice in fiction. An exquisitely written tale, Flora's Suitcase is redolent with elements of magical realism and a decidedly fresh look at the traditional family saga, taking the reader on a funny, mysterious journey as one woman carves out her identity in a new land.
Dalia Rabinovich weaves the intricate and mysterious tapestry of David and Flora Grossenberg's lives with skill and imagination. The young Jewish couple emigrate to Colombia shortly after their marriage and soon discover that the clash of cultures--between Colombian and American traditions, and between modern Jews and their conservative Russian emigré relations--as well as the foreign landscape will test their marriage and their family bonds.
After the arrival, Flora desperately wants out of the clutches of David's three older sisters, overbearing matriarchs all, and insists that she and David rent a house of their own. There they discover a curious inhabitant, Bolivariana, a wizened old woman who claims to be the illegitimate daughter of Columbia's national hero, Simon Bolivar. She wanders their house aimlessly, scavenging for food late at night, and displaying her uncanny gift for predicting the future.
Also clamoring for Flora's attention are a growing brood of children, a succession of Wayward maids, and the more unusual male members of the family, including the increasingly erratic Harold, whose passion for mangoes lured the entire family to Columbia in the first place.
Bright with imagination and steeped in rich South American culture, Flora's Suitcase chronicles a journey in a strange and wonderful land, marking the emergence of a promising new literary talent.
"Flora's Suitcase is a magical family saga. It's beautifully written, imaginatively evoked and so touching and funny that any reader will be constantly surprised. What a wonderful first novel! And how nice that I had a small part to play in bringing it to readers."
--Olivia Goldsmith
Before they married, Dave had promised Flora that they would live forever in her hometown of Cincinnatiu. He would make many other promises and break them, but that was the one for which he would always he held accountable. It was to be the dormant root of every argument, rarely hurled as an accusation but always present, implicit. What Dave did not know was that Flora, at her mother's suggestion, had asked him to make a promise that she was sure he could not keep.
"A broken promise goes a long way," Shana advised her daughter.
"What did you ask of papa? Flora inquired.
"I don't remember." Shana smiled mischievously. "But what's important is that he does."
--from Flora's Suitcase
評論 (4)
《出版社週刊》(Publisher's Weekly)評論
Rabinovich's quirky, wry and perceptive debut won HarperCollins's "Best Seller" contest to launch a first-time novelist. Her narrative focuses on an initially hopeful Jewish-American woman who leaves Cincinnati in 1933 and moves with her quietly domineering husband and their baby to Colombia, where she copes with culture shock and his obstreperous, Russian-Jewish émigré family. Three more children and a quarter century, later, Flora Grossenberg has been worn down by her manipulative husband, a textile manufacturer, by his venomous family and by Colombia itself, portrayed here as a deeply superstitious, backward country beset by endless civil wars. By the late 1950s, when Flora makes her first return trip to the U.S., she is full of suppressed rage, stifled by the wrong choices she made by bowing to her husband's will. Rabinovich, who was born in Colombia and now teaches writing at Brooklyn College, invests this exotic adventure with mordant feminist observations of cross-cultural misunderstandings, but her characters are too often caricatures (e.g., Bolivariana, the Grossenbergs' wizened, defiant maid, who claims to be freedom-fighter Simon Bolivar's illegitimate daughter; and Harold, Flora's eccentric brother-in-law, obsessed with mangos, who blows off his toe with a rifle). Flora's suitcase, symbol of her hope that she will someday escape her frustrating life, in the end becomes a poignant metaphor for her failure to do so. Editors, Sharon Bowers, Fiona Hallowell; agent, Jimmy Vines. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus 評論
A first novel, by the winner of the HarperCollins ``Write the Bestseller, contest tells of a Jewish-Russian-American family transplanted to the unlikely soil of Colombia. Rabinovich grew up in Colombia herself and, given the extensive set of acknowledgments (largely to family members) in the opening pages, the story may in fact be based on her own mother and father. Here, Flora and David Grossenberg are a peculiarly mismatched couple: hes one of a large clan of Jewish émigrés from Russia, she an assimilated Jew from Cincinnati. They meet in Paris, fall in love, and marry. In one of a series of decisions sprung on the unsuspecting Flora by her new husband, the couple and their first baby find themselves at the outset of the book heading into the Colombian interior to join David's family, an incestuously close-knit group of brothers and sisters-in-law who are struggling to maintain an import business in Medellín. Of course, Colombia is the home of Gabriel García Márquez, and nothing but extraordinary things happen there (in fiction, anyway). Harold, for example, one of David's brothers, grows so fond of his diet of fruitmostly mangosthat he turns orange and sets up house in a mango tree. A waif-like urchin who joins Flora and David's household blossoms (overnight, literally) into a lucious and tempting woman who may have been impregnated by a jasmine tree. An eerie centenarian takes over as presiding spirit of the house, until her bizarre and unnatural death. In short, Rabinovichs debut is permeated by magical realism, recalling the quasi-feminist perspective of Laura Esquivel as much as the work of García Márquez. Regrettably, though, innovation yields here to affectation in the mere accumulation of wonders piled high in a disconnected series of episodes. The authors knack for description is a help, but characterization is in short supply and structure nonexistent. A disappointing if amiable debut.
《書目》(Booklist)評論
Full of surprise and promise, Rabinovich's debut novel garnered first prize in the Best Seller contest sponsored by HarperCollins. In an engaging story spanning decades and flowing back and forth in time, Rabinovich traces the lives of American Flora Grossenberg and her Russian emigre husband, David. The setting is the 1930s, and after sailing to Marseilles for a honeymoon in Paris, Flora comes to realize David's secret agenda includes joining his extended family in South America. Having departed the U.S., the couple journeys to Colombia to begin a new life in Medellin, where David's three sisters and a bevy of relatives are already ensconced. Rabinovich surrounds Flora with an intriguing, colorfully rendered cast of characters and ever-increasing offspring in this touching, funny, beautifully written tale. --Alice Joyce
《圖書館雜誌》(Library Journal )書評
After her marriage in the 1930s, Flora Grossenberg expects to settle into a conventional Jewish American life in Cincinnati. But her husband, David, moves them to faraway Colombia to join his Russian emigré family. Flora's attempts to settle into this tangled culture are frustrated by David's three meddling sisters. And when Flora convinces David to move into their own house, it turns out to be secretly occupied by an elderly woman who predicts the future and crosses freely between the real world and Flora's dreams. The members of the town and David's family figure in a series of highly unusual incidentsat times mysterious and humorousthat tie into the day-to-day affairs of Flora's growing family. Eventually, Flora's original vision of family life seems successfully transplanted to Colombia, against a backdrop of colorful episodes that would never have taken place in Cincinnati. Winner of the publisher's "Best Seller" contest for a first novel, this is recommended for all collections.David A. Beronä, Univ. of New England, Biddleford, ME (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.