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Cargando... No Matter How Much You Promise to Cook or Pay the Rent You Blew It Cauze [sic] Bill Bailey Ain't Never Coming Home Again (2003)por Edgardo Vega Yunque
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Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. Achterkant Beschrijving: Vidamía Farrell, half Puerto Ricaans, half Iers, gaat op zoek naar haar biologische vader, die ze nooit heeft gekend. Ooit was Bill Farrell een talentvolle jazzpianist, tot hij als marinier in Vietnam zijn beste vriend en twee vingers verloor. Bij het tweede gezin van haar vader vindt Vidamía alle warmte en liefde die haar eigen moeder haar niet kan geven. Hun verwijdering verdiept zich wanneer Vidamía verliefd wordt op een jonge Afro-Amerikaanse muzikant. Plotseling worden Vidamía en al haar geliefden meegesleurd in een gruwelijke maalstroom van geweld (achterkant) sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
An epic novel of jazz, race and the effects of war on an American family This sweeping drama of intimately connected families --black, white, and Latino-- boldly conjures up the ever-shifting cultural mosaic that is America. At its heart is VidamÍa Farrell, half Puerto Rican, half Irish, who sets out in search of the father she has never known. Her journey takes her from her affluent home to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where her father Billy Farrell now lives with his second family. Once a gifted jazz pianist, Billy lost two fingers in the Vietnam War and has since shut himself off from jazz. In this powerful modern odyssey, VidamÍa struggles to bring her father back to the world of jazz. Her quest gives her a new understanding of family, particularly through her half-sisters Fawn, a lonely young poet plagued with a secret, and Cookie, a sassy, streetsmart homegirl who happens to be "white." And when VidamÍa becomes involved with a young African-American jazz saxophonist, she is forced to explore her own complex roots, along with the dizzying contradictions of race etched in the American psyche. Edgardo Vega YunquÉ vividly captures the myriad voices of our American idiom like a virtuoso spinning out a series of expanding riffs, by turns lyrical, deadly, flippant, witty, and haunting. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
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Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999Clasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio:
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It is the story of Vidamia Farrel, who is raised by her mother (Elsa Santiago) and step-father Barry. As a teenager, she decides to find her birth-father, Billy Farrel and once she does, she enters the lives of him and his family. Billy is a Viet Nam vet suffering from his memories of the battlefield death of his friend Joey Santiago (Elsa's brother), which he blames himself for.
It's a family saga and I found myself totally lost in this story that is so huge in scope and time. Yet for all its breadth, it lacked depth. Billy Farrel, Vidamia and Elsa are complex, well-developed characters. But many of the other characters are two dimensional: Barry, the nearly perfect husband and step-father, Lurleen the perfect wife and mother. Billy's other children (Cookie, Cliff, Fawn and Caitlin) are blonde, beautiful and talented. Fawn's character gains depth in relation to a family tragedy -- more because that was necessary for the plot than because she was an important character in her own right.
For the most part, the characters are very trusting: Vidamia finds her maternal grandmother for the first time as a teenager, and Grandma Maude is only too happy to see her and accept her. As is everyone else in Billy's family. And, Vidamia's maternal grandfather (Tumba Santiago, long estranged from his family) is equally overjoyed and unquestioning when Vidamia shows up on his doorstep.
The story is interesting, and I didn't really notice any of these flaws until I was more than 3/4 through the book. There's a lot in it about jazz music and jazz legends, about race relations in the U.S. and about how you define yourself. All in all, I'm glad I spent time with Vidamia and her family. ( )