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Rating: 
Summary: Swans in Puerto Rico?
Review: I am a big fan of Rosario Ferre. Her stories make me connect with that long lost Puerto Rico. However, I wonder---- why write a ballerina's story in 1917 Puerto Rico? Although it is still worth reading, definetely not one of her bests!!!!!!!!!!.
Rating: 
Summary: Historical fiction at its best
Review: I loved this book... I started reading it in the cobblestoned streets of Old San Juan, on my way to snack on a famous buttered "mallorca" accompanied by cafe con leche from La Bombonera bakery. Before I knew it, I was enthralled in the story. I found myself walking the same streets as the characters, sitting in San Juan's main plazas while I read about the characters strolling at night in the same streets.... This book does a fantastic job of combining Puerto Rican culture and its political turmoil at the turn of the 19th century with the struggles of Russia during their revolution. The main characters are russian and they slowly become "latinized"-- more universal symbols of political struggle, characters that are displaced from their homeland to face the struggle of a new culture, language, and political struggle. This is Rosario Ferre's best book.
Rating:
Summary: Historical fiction at its best
Review: I loved this book... I started reading it in the cobblestoned streets of Old San Juan, on my way to snack on a famous buttered "mallorca" accompanied by cafe con leche from La Bombonera bakery. Before I knew it, I was enthralled in the story. I found myself walking the same streets as the characters, sitting in San Juan's main plazas while I read about the characters strolling at night in the same streets.... This book does a fantastic job of combining Puerto Rican culture and its political turmoil at the turn of the 19th century with the struggles of Russia during their revolution. The main characters are russian and they slowly become "latinized"-- more universal symbols of political struggle, characters that are displaced from their homeland to face the struggle of a new culture, language, and political struggle. This is Rosario Ferre's best book.
Rating: 
Summary: What we don't see counts.
Review: It may have clean verbage and a winning premise, but the story misses at every turn. The book attempts to cover Puerto Rican weather, politics, the social climate, and the main focus: a Russian ballerina and her dance troupe. But the novel fails to cover anything well. The book never fleshes out the characters. Every scene which might engage the reader and become exciting happens off stage so that we're left with a narrator's lackluster reference to it. We don't even really see the ballerinas warm-up, let alone feel their joy in dancing. I'm not sure what the writer's goal was since there's very little tension, and the story fails to have a clear plot.
Rating:
Summary: What we don't see counts.
Review: It may have clean verbage and a winning premise, but the story misses at every turn. The book attempts to cover Puerto Rican weather, politics, the social climate, and the main focus: a Russian ballerina and her dance troupe. But the novel fails to cover anything well. The book never fleshes out the characters. Every scene which might engage the reader and become exciting happens off stage so that we're left with a narrator's lackluster reference to it. We don't even really see the ballerinas warm-up, let alone feel their joy in dancing. I'm not sure what the writer's goal was since there's very little tension, and the story fails to have a clear plot.
Rating:
Summary: Flying short: Ferré's new novel cannot leave the ground
Review: Rosario Ferré is one of my favorite writers. When I was a teenager, I went to a book store in San Juan and saw the Mexican edition of "Papeles de Pandora". I liked her picture very much. She looked smart and free. At that age that was reason enough, for me, to buy her book. I loved it. It was something very diferent from the books about colonialism, sugar cane and how much we Puerto Rican suffer because we are good people, that we read at school. She was something different. A new voice. Over the years I kept reading her, buying her books as soon as I saw them at the bookstores. I liked most of them, very much.When I read in an interview that she was planing to publish a book about a Russian ballerina stock in San Juan, I said "great" I just read the book. Not very interesting. The same old story, told in the same old way. The ballerina falling in love with the independentista in a back ground of political inestability. Worst than that, the characters lack resonance and the whole thing sounds like a B-class movie about revolution and love in the Caribbean. Too bad. I still think she can do better. Let us wait for her next proyect.
Rating: 
Summary: Terrific Book
Review: This is the first book of Ferre's that I read and I found it just fine. I agree with Publisher's Weekly that the introduction of a new voice near the end was jarring. But as someone not familiar with Puerto Rico of the early 20the Century I thought it was interesting, and the descriptions of the ballet company were engrossing. Great literature? No. A good read about two subjects exotic to most readers -- old Puerto Rico and ballet? Yes. I think it would make a great movie.
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