14. Finding Miracles
Sep. 14th, 2009 05:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerOn the one hand, I enjoyed Julia Alvarez's Finding Miracles. I thought that the second half was especially well done; the mystery of Milly's parentage becomes engrossing, and while her love story was somewhat perfunctory it never became gag-worthy. The book also did a good job showing the horrors of dictatorship without either numbing the reader or downplaying the horrors; it probably helped that the horrors were stories told to the heroine, rather than inflicted on her directly.
On the other hand, my God, how much do I want to drown Milly in a bucket? She's the main character, so this is kind of a problem. Her greatest fear is that her friends will find out that she was adopted from an unnamed Latin American country. While it seems overblown - is there some kind of anti-adoption prejudice rampant in Vermont? - there is an explanation of sorts: Milly's grandmother still hasn't forgiven her parents for adopting Milly, and she makes her feelings known at every possible occasion.
So okay. But still, it's hard to sympathize with the girl so lacking in empathy that she strenuously avoids the new boy at school, who is a refugee from her birth country, because being around him is sort of uncomfortable. Never mind that he's probably drowning in discomfort every minute of every day, and never mind that in order to properly avoid him Milly has to avoid all of her own friends too.
Milly gets much more bearable by the end. She visits her land of birth, realizes how big her problems are not, and becomes more sympathetic accordingly. But it happens over two-thirds of the way through the book, which is too late to redeem her entirely.
On the other hand, my God, how much do I want to drown Milly in a bucket? She's the main character, so this is kind of a problem. Her greatest fear is that her friends will find out that she was adopted from an unnamed Latin American country. While it seems overblown - is there some kind of anti-adoption prejudice rampant in Vermont? - there is an explanation of sorts: Milly's grandmother still hasn't forgiven her parents for adopting Milly, and she makes her feelings known at every possible occasion.
So okay. But still, it's hard to sympathize with the girl so lacking in empathy that she strenuously avoids the new boy at school, who is a refugee from her birth country, because being around him is sort of uncomfortable. Never mind that he's probably drowning in discomfort every minute of every day, and never mind that in order to properly avoid him Milly has to avoid all of her own friends too.
Milly gets much more bearable by the end. She visits her land of birth, realizes how big her problems are not, and becomes more sympathetic accordingly. But it happens over two-thirds of the way through the book, which is too late to redeem her entirely.
