At their best, these explainers also provide overarching context for the history and struggles of the Marte family, forming an enthralling through-line for the novel. Ona ponders, for instance, “How do lineages of women from colonized places, where emphasis is put on silent enduring, learn when and where to confide in their own family if forbearance is the only attitude elevated and modeled?”
Acevedo is best known for her young adult novels, including “The Poet X,” which won the National Book Award for young people’s literature in 2018. “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. Even Mamá Silvia, the long-dead and mostly reviled Marte matriarch, is afforded tenderness. “I don’t know many definitions of love, or not ones I can put into words,” Camila says, recounting the time Mamá Silvia made her a treasured doll. “But nothing has ever felt as warm as being known so well that someone could hand you a monstrosity they made with their own hands after learning you.”
Divided into four parts — “Six Weeks Before the Wake,” “Two Days Until the Wake,” “One Day Until the Wake” and “The Wake” — “Family Lore” is, in the end, not about preparing for death, but reveling in the opportunity of life. “We are here, embodied to experience life, and then we are not,” Flor says. “This is one journey, and beyond this there is another. There is no veil between this world and that one. They are the same world, the one before, this one, the one that comes next, a string of pearls, ends tied so tightly you cannot feel the knot that binds.” Pearls of magic and wisdom, hard but not hardened, the story of the Marte sisters is a treasure to behold.
Rebecca Carroll is a writer, cultural critic, editor at large for The Meteor media collective and the author, most recently, of “Surviving the White Gaze: A Memoir.”
