Three days prior to a wake, this novel traces the lives of each of the Marte women, weaving together past and present, the Dominican Republic and New York City. Told with Elizabeth Acevedo's inimitable voice, this is an indelible portrait of sisters and cousins, aunts and nieces—one family's journey through their history helping them better navigate all that is to come.
Even with the scaffolding of a family tree in the book’s preface, the narrative isn’t always easy to follow (which one could argue is perhaps the point). Fortunately, Acevedo adds brief explanatory passages to help anchor the transitions back and forth through time, and hilarious side notes from Ona offer a deeply pleasing way to learn more about the family ... Family Lore is her first adult novel, and the depth, grace and nuance that Acevedo gives her characters is palpable; her love for these women comes through with arresting clarity ... Pearls of magic and wisdom, hard but not hardened, the story of the Marte sisters is a treasure to behold.
Vibrant ... Acevedo wields her own sort of magic in her first novel for adults, deftly blending comedy and sorrow. Family Lore is an absorbing, entertaining portrait of a Dominican American woman whose exceptional relationship with death keeps her family — and readers — guessing ... Acevedo's attention to her character's mannerisms and habits makes them relatable ... Acevedo is a writer with the tools to go the distance.
Enchanting ... The present narrative is frequently interrupted by nostalgia and melancholy tied to the motherland, knots of memories of Santo Domingo ... Strikes a rousing prose blend of bluntness, lyricism, slang, pop culture references, and the interlingual expansiveness fluidly employed by first- and second-generation immigrants. With grace and compassion, Family Lore glides through the sometimes riotous or hard-won love of immigrant families ... This is a proudly women-led lineage where stories are always beginning and rarely ending, transmuted by their progeny despite the intended closure of a living wake, where one life quite literally bleeds into another.
