The Barnes & Noble Review
La Musa de la Patria

In recent years, novelists Mona Simpson (Anywhere But Here), Karla Kuban (Marchlands) and Susannah Moore (My Old Sweetheart), among numerous others, have memorably explored the mother-daughter relationship, showing us the conflicted, often painful intersections of the lives of their multigenerational characters. But in Julia Alvarez's new novel, In the Name of Salome, the mother, Dominican poet and political muse Salomé Ureña, only lives long enough to hear her three-year-old daughter Camila recite one of her consumptive mother's poems. What we get, then, is a compelling work of fiction based on remarkably tireless research and shaped by Camila's reach into the past, into her mother's history and her mother's place in history, in order to make sense of the choices she has made about her own.

A masterful manipulator of time, Alvarez alternates points of view, shuttling us not only back and forth between Salomé and Camila, but also moving us forward in Salome's life as she moves us backward in Camila's. Salomé writes in secret as a child, publishes briefly under a pseudonym and soon emerges as herself, a figure of inspiration for a nation. But all the while she longs for that other kind of passion, the one her family and her readers would like to believe she is above: the passionate love of a man. Sadly, though she finds that love in Papancho, he is never fully hers. He belongs in turn to his country, to his studies, and inevitably to another woman. How Salomé withstands losing this managain andagain has to do with what we all withstand — wisely and unwisely — in the name of love.

Camila writes poetry only as a mature woman. As a child her life is shaped by the political values that shape Papancho's life. Those values find only cautious expression in the U.S. where she studies at the University of Minnesota and later becomes a professor at Vassar. But in Cuba, where she spends the last 13 years of her life, she fulfills the dream of both her mother and father as a vital and dedicated participant in Fidel Castro's "revolutionary experiment."

Through skillful mechanics Alvarez makes characters of time itself and the history that marks it. And what troubling history it is, spanning over 100 years (1856-1973) in the life of the Dominican Republic, where the government changes hands with as much frequency as a señorita changes her linens, and "Depending on the president, the pantheon of heroes changes, one regime's villain is the next one's hero, until the word hero, like the word patria, begins to mean nothing.".

But if history renders language meaningless, what is left? Only the struggle to make meaning, and only love makes that struggle real and worthwhile; on this matter mother and daughter agree. So this is also a love story, in which Salomé discovers that she will give up everything — her writing, her social activism, finally her health — for the man she loves, and Camilla discovers that she will sacrifice her secure teaching position in the U.S., the approval of family, friends and erstwhile lovers for the very thing her mother's passionate poetry taught her: love for the land and the people who give life to it.

Alvarez's skillful prose styling distinguishes the two women not only through the details of their lives but also through their meticulously wrought voices. Moreover, just as interesting as what distinguishes them from one another is what unites them: the pull of public life on their private lives and the challenges presented by the conventions that govern their lives as women. And they and we thrill equally to the ultimate discovery we're all reaching for, "that hushed and holy moment...when the word becomes flesh."

In a book rich in extended metaphor, where poetry and idealism play a huge role, we are never encumbered with abstraction. This is a writer going at full tilt: wry, wise, ironic, forgiving. She, like both the women of this novel, is an educator, though neither didactic nor condescending. Even though we know from the beginning the details about the end of both mother's and daughter's lives, Alvarez manages to sustain an air of suspense throughout, the point being not what happens, but how it comes about, and at what cost.

Susan Thames is the author of a book of short stories, AS MUCH AS I KNOW. Her novel I'll Be Home Late Tonight was a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection.

Masterful ... rich and rewarding historical fiction ... poignant, colorful, exhilarating.

Original and illuminating ... Alvarez's most ambitious work to date.

Dazzling... .Alvarez joins the ranks of Gabriel García Márquez and Isabel Allende... .

A delicate writer whose respect for the force of human love gives the novel its exquisite tension.

A refreshingly stimulating novel, told in a neorealistic style that will intrigue.

By the author of How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accent, this ambitious and "magnificent" novel, based on the lives of two heroic women, Camila and Salome Urena, spans more than a century of the Caribbean's tumultuous history. "Keeps the reader engrossed from beginning to end." "A cultural, political, poetic, and emotional tapestry - I read it in one sitting." "Absolutely intoxicating; I can't wait to read more of her work." Reminded one reviewer of A. S. Byatt's Possession. Recommended as a book club read.

In the Name of Salome underscores the unique and yet universal wisdom generations of women impart to each other, but Salome's rich and gripping life story, culled from scant existing records, is the real treat.
— Ms. Magazine

When Camila was three, her mother, Salom Urena, the Dominican Republic's "National Poetess," died. For years, the youngster wrestled with the loss, holding fast to the dream that her mother would someday reappear, a mysterious, larger-than-life stranger. Meanwhile, her aunt Ramona struggled to help the child understand Salom 's demise, teaching her a special, if sacrilegious, incantation to soften what had happened: "In the name of the Father, the Son and my Mother, Salom ." Alvarez (How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents) has written a brilliantly layered novel that is grounded in 100 years of Latin American history. As Salom 's story intertwines with Camila's, we are made privy to politics both personal and international. Passionate and unpredictable, the book quietly lambastes colonialism and imperialism. At the same time, feminist themes emerge, from the enduring agony of motherless daughters to the integration of lesbians into progressive movements. Well wrought and powerful--if at times structurally confusing--this is a novel to be passed from friend to friend, from madre to hija. Highly recommended.--Eleanor J. Bader, Brooklyn, NY Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.\

…Alvarez has written another powerful and ambitious novel….
—Lambda Book Report

In this enchanting novel, the author of In the Time of Butterflies contrasts the lives of a famous poet and her daughter, who is a mousy closet lesbian.

Alvarez gives us a powerful sense of inhabiting the life that she recreates, along with the changing world that surrounds it.
—Women's Review of Books

This is Alvarez's most ambitious work to date…[it] delivers a strong sense of who these people were…Original and illuminating . . .
—The New York Times Book Review

Alvarez delivers a history lesson imbued with magic, intimacy, warmth, and humor.
— Out Magazine

Alvarez poignantly explores the interplay between personal and political revolutions—fool-hardy, painful, and sometimes necessary.
—Entertainment Weekly

In her restless and vibrant fourth novel, Alvarez (Yo!, 1997, etc.) turns to the historical figures of Salomé Ureña, former national poet of the Dominican Republic, and her daughter, Camila, a professor in the US, chronicling each woman's lifelong struggle to define la patria and her obligation to it. Starting near the end of Camila's life and the beginning of Salomé's, alternating chapters move through time in opposite directions to form a rich narrative tapestry. From an early age, poetry and politics are Salomé's crucible, and in the 1870s she becomes the voice of a people longing for independence from dictators and colonizers. A younger and especially ardent admirer wins her heart, but marriage to Pancho takes Salomé from her muse, as their children and a commitment to establishing a liberal school for girls consume her while the political situation goes from bad to worse. When Pancho begins a second family in Paris, where he's gone to obtain advanced medical training, the strain on Salomé takes a serious toll on her health, and she contracts tuberculosis. Camila, who lost her mother when she was three, is first viewed retiring from Vassar in 1960 in order to go help the revolution in Cuba, where she grew up with her stepfamily. Camila's struggle has been different: after confronting a crisis in her sexual identity and facing down American xenophobia as a college student during WWI, she must come to terms with Salomé's complex legacy of love and liberation while pursuing an academic career. But in the end Camila finds her own place and her own homeland, where she can carry on her mother's work. These lives, gentlytold,have currents within them as wide and deep as an ocean's—and no one can miss their primal force.