Eccentric neighborhoods

Description

"Attempts to portray social dislocations of a Puerto Rican society transformed by the Spanish-Cuban-American War and US intervention through the lives of two island families. Ferré captures the decadence of the old Spanish world and the ascent of a new dominant class with a different outlook and values as they impact the lives of her characters"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.

Description

Elvira Vernet comes from a male-dominated family of merchants living in the Puerto Rican town of La Concordia. Her father, Santiago Vernet, and his four sons help transform Puerto Rico from a bucolic island where hunger is a part of the landscape into a bustling industrial society with all of its contradictions and attendant ills. Handsome, eloquent, and enormously successful, he can't help but charm his only daughter. Yet, in understanding her obsession with her father, Elvira must first come to terms with her mother, who died many years before, and whose family, the Rivas de Santillanas, had roots in an old plantation culture that could not survive the era of mechanization. Eccentric Neighborhoods is an attempt to lay bare the psychological conflicts that determine the relationships between mothers and daughters, and it is also the story of Puerto Rico's transformation, from the beginning of the century, into a spearhead of the Caribbean.

Subjects

Other Editions

• Eccentric neighborhoodsFarrar, Straus, and Giroux1998-01-01
• Vecindarios excéntricosVintage Español/Vintage Books1999-01-01
• Eccentric neighborhoodsPlume1999-01-01