|
|
Kim
Rating:
 
Review
Set in 1700s South America, a bite by a rabid dog to 12 year-old Sierva Maria’s ankle begins this passionately woven tale of love, lust, and religion. Everyone makes a big deal of the dog bite, even though Sierva Maria displays no ill symptoms, to the extent that her father, the Marquis de Casaqlduero decides that Catholic intervention is needed, reasoning that his daughter must now be possessed of evil spirits. While confined to a cell at the Convent of Santa Clara, a young priest named Cayetano Delaura is tasked with exorcising Sierva Maria’s soul, but instead falls hopelessly in love with the girl, and she, him. This was my first introduction to Senor Marquez, and it won’t be my last.
Best Line:
“His true home, however, was the library, where he spent as many as fourteen hours a day working and reading, and where he kept a campaign cot for the times he was caught off guard by sleep.”
Suzanne
Rating:
Review
This fable about a girl with long, flowing, copper-colored hair is short, but not sweet. The title is fitting, as a tender love insinuates itself between an extraordinary 12 year-old girl and the priest assigned to exorcise her. The story takes place centuries ago in the days of slavery along the Caribbean coast. Ignored by her aristocratic father and rejected by a mother addicted to cacao and fermented honey, Sierva María grows up amongst the slaves on her family’s estate in town. When she is bitten by a rabid dog and imprisoned in a convent by her father, who’s convinced she’s going to die, her background of African languages and religions only counts against her with the evil abbess. Love grows in the unlikeliest of places, as Father Cayetano Delaura is brought in to deal with her. As in the author’s other stories, the language is rich and ripe, exposing the brutality of life, and love is not the fairy tale kind that brings happiness.
Best Line:
“No medicine cures what happiness cannot.” (pg. 33)
|
|
