Rara Avis - Hardcover

Weld, Jacqueline Bograd

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1885983298 ISBN 13: 9781885983299

Publisher: Turtle Point Pr, 1998

Synopsis

Book by Weld, Jacqueline Bograd

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

A savvy, irreverent parrot defends its masters, the wealthy but doomed Romandias family, against charges of being "superfluous" in Weld's (Peggy: The Wayward Guggenheim) delicately evocative first novel, set in an exotic and unnamed South American country during the mid-1950s. Judged by a comical Traveling Circuit Court who appears at the Romandias mansion one day, the family is deemed a lazy clan of good-for-nothings. In addition to the philandering father and the seditious parrot, the crew includes the following: the benumbed mother; various loser uncles; a grandmother-aunt who trails a cloud of dust and "wears chicken feathers on her eyelids"; and two spoiled daughters, demon-child Grita and seven-year-old Lita, who narrates the day's horrifying trial from a distance of years and through the fog of a fever. Soraida, the gorgeously plumed, anthropomorphically well-spoken parrot, is the only member of the family who can stick up for them, and she does so brilliantly. "What kind of family is this?" the magistrate demands, to which the bird replies: "Dreamers all. Nothing more than dreamers. But nothing less." Weld's surreal, playful satire brings to mind the work of Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa, among others, while her lyrical restraint lends great charm to this promising first effort.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist:

In her first novel, Weld, a first-generation American of Venezuelan and Uruguayan ancestry, takes us into the dream world of Aguas Calientes, a sultry South American town. The Romandias family is challenged to justify its existence in a trial brought on by the foulmouthed and seditious prattle of the ancient parrot, Soraida, that runs the household and ultimately provides the family's eloquent defense. The Romandias adults don't work. One plays imaginary chess games and manufactures unsellable hats; another tangos and fathers illegitimate children; others flirt, rock in a rocking chair, and adopt stray cats; and family servant Hortensia Salsipuedes may be a witch. The narrator, young Lita Romandias, is never quite sure whether her story is a memory or a product of fever or the oppressive heat. Soraida, though, is a rare bird, indeed, an observer of life and history that freely offers insights and wisdom to the Romandiases, their persecutors, and readers. Mary Carroll

About this edition

• Publisher: Turtle Point Pr
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 1885983298
• ISBN 13: 9781885983299
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 191