Engaging ... On its own, such material would be unrelentingly grim, but Ramírez makes her book almost novelistic, edifying and consistently entertaining ... Despite writing such an intimate family history, Ramírez doesn’t get distracted by sentimentality ... Ramírez approaches it almost as if she was talking about the history of Colombia as a whole.
An eminently readable and beautifully written book ... Ramírez’s exposition is careful and explicit without being gratuitous. This search for meaning and transcendence will have particular resonance as the Trump administration escalates tensions in the region.
Honest, open ... Unfolds vividly ... The Violence does not skimp on the details of what Colombians have had to endure over the past 70 years. If I learned anything by reading this book, it is that Colombians are a resilient people. Survival and optimism is the only truth they know ... Ramírez soars gracefully where other writers might have struggled to interest outsiders in another family’s history.
Drenching the family narrative with the frail complexities of love and memory, Ramírez decouples it from Colombia’s relentless and stereotypical violence to claim her own piece of its story ... A sensitive literary endeavor to honor a delicate, devastating past.
