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In this ingenious satire, Solita, the not quite ten-year-old daughter of refugees from Franco’s Spain, is whisked from the urban ghetto of Galmeda to El Topaz, the lush hacienda of a wealthy eccentric, which her mother assures her will be paradise. But behind its beautiful façade, El Topaz is a quagmire of social subterfuge, from its politicking adults to its spiteful children, and Solita finds herself alone in a glittery world where you couldn’t trust anything. Or anybody. You had to navigate completely on your own.”
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Review:
"The best way to get where you want to be is to please those who own the road," warns ten-year-old Solita's mother, Pilar. Pilar, a dispossessed aristocrat who escaped Franco's Spain with Julian, Solita's exciting labor-lawyer father, wants a change. Tired of living as an unemployed refugee in a run-down neighborhood in a crowded city in Chile, she is ecstatic when she finds people who do indeed own a road going where she wants to be: Paradise. And paradise, an estate called El Topaz owned by "important people" with children Solita can make "lasting and lifelong friendship with," is where Solita, her younger brother, and their mother go. This paradise is full of bored aristocrats, quirky animals who "smell normal," servants with personalities, and children who endlessly measure everything about everybody. For Solita, used to hand-me-down clothes, one pair of panties with rotten elastic, and her mother's constantly smiled reminder "when in Rome...," Paradise is full of road-blocks, secrets, sometimes thrilling dangers, and an unending longing to return home to her father. We feel the world Solita feels in colorful, sweet, and gory detail. And with her we learn about choosing the people and the roads we follow. -- For great reviews of books for girls, check out Let's Hear It for the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14. -- From 500 Great Books by Women; review by Jesse Larsen
From Publishers Weekly:
In her first novel, Casteda, who was raised in Chile, recreates the magical world of a group of South American aristocrats just after WW II, but diminishes the charm of her tale by dragging it on too long. The narrator, a lively youngster named Solita, lives in poverty in an unnamed Latin American country where her parents are political refugees from Franco's Spain. While her father dabbles in radical politics, her mother, a renowned beauty, tries to better her family's status by hobnobbing with wealthy eccentrics. One of them, "Tia" Merce, a bisexual fond of Solita's mother, invites the family to her lush country estate, El Topaz. Among Merce's three spoiled daughters, Solita begins an education in the ways of the upper classes. Merce's constant stream of guests, their chatter and their pretensions are vividly conveyed; Solita's naive, highly accurate descriptions of her elders are often riotously funny. The novel ends with a tragic murder and a resulting loss of innocence for all the children.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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- PublisherGrove Press
- Publication date1995
- ISBN 10 0802134270
- ISBN 13 9780802134271
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages328
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Paradise by Castedo, Elena [Paperback ]
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Book Description Paperback. Condition: new. Paperback. In this ingenious satire, Solita, the not quite ten-year-old daughter of refugees from Franco's Spain, is whisked from the urban ghetto of Galmeda to El Topaz, the lush hacienda of a wealthy eccentric, which her mother assures her will be paradise. But behind its beautiful facade, El Topaz is a quagmire of social subterfuge, from its politicking adults to its spiteful children, and Solita finds herself alone in a glittery world where "you couldn't trust anything. Or anybody. You had to navigate completely on your own." In Paradise, "Ms. Castedo has brought off, with acid wit, the far from easy task of revealing arrogance, folly, injustice and debauchery through the eyes of an observer who does not know what those qualities are." (The Atlantic) Nominated for the 1990 National Book Award, here is the impressive literary debut of an acclaimed new Latin American talent. Ten-year-old Solita serves as the insightful narrator of this exquisitely written, richly imagined novel of the politics, pretentions and amours of Latin America's wealthy. Shipping may be from multiple locations in the US or from the UK, depending on stock availability. Seller Inventory # 9780802134271
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