Eccentric Neighborhoods - Tapa blanda

With humor, nostalgia and fateful irony, Puerto Rican novelist Ferre breathes life into the story of two prominent Puerto Rican families living in the first half of the century during the sugarcane aristocracy's last days. In what often amounts to an imaginary family portrait gallery, narrator Elvira Vernet describes three generations of her forebears: on her mother's side, landed gentry of the central Plata; on her father's side, powerful politically ambitious builders who flourished during the 1940s when the U. S. began to pour federal money into housing and municipal projects. Although the island's recent political history (including visits by Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt) is engagingly related, love and family politics are Ferre's subjects, and the heart of the novel is its female characters - especially the budding feminist Elvira and her angry, intelligent mother, Clarissa ... ' PUBLISHERS WEEKLY

Lush, vibrant, and disarmingly funny, Rosario Ferre's new novel confirms her reputation as one of the most colourful and captivating novelists in the Latin American tradition.