How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, by Julia Alvarez

If I had read this book at any other time, I would have loved it. Compared to Maya Angelou's I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings it seemed a little flat. It was nonetheless enjoyable; the lives of four sisters who immigrate, in the 1960's, from the Dominican Republic, with their parents. Their separate and joint stories are revealed backwards, with the story beginning in the present and proceeding back in time to the moment of their flight from the island. Each vignette is told from the perspective of a different family member. Not all of them are equally fleshed out, though; the father in particular seemed puzzlingly opaque.

I'm a sucker for books about families with four daughters....but The Poisonwood Bible was better.

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