- Hardcover: 208 pages
- Publisher: Atria Books (Jan 19 2010)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1416592768
- ISBN-13: 978-1416592761
- Product Dimensions: 23.6 x 16.9 x 2.1 cm
- Shipping Weight: 363 g
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #331,287 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
"Victoire is indeed a victory -- of style, form and of course, voice. For those who are new to Maryse Condé, you are in for a delicious and absorbing treat." -- Rebecca Walker, author of Black, White, and Jewish: Autobiography of a Shifting Self
Product Description
The critically acclaimed, award-winning author of the classic historical novel Segu, Maryse Condé has pieced together the life of her maternal grandmother to create a moving and profound novel.
Maryse Condé's personal journey of discovery and revelation becomes ours as we learn of Victoire, her white-skinned mestiza grandmother who worked as a cook for the Walbergs, a family of white Creoles, in the French Antilles.
Using her formidable skills as a storyteller, Condé describes her grandmother as having "Australian whiteness for the color of her skin...She jarred with my world of women in Italian straw bonnets and men necktied in three-piece linen suits, all of them a very black shade of black. She appeared to me doubly strange."
Victoire was spurred by Condé's desire to learn of her family history, resolving to begin her quest by researching the life of her grandmother. While uncovering the circumstances of Victoire's unique life story, Condé also comes to grips with a haunting question: How could her own mother, a black militant, have been raised in the Walberg's home, a household of whites?
Creating a work that takes readers into a time and place populated with unforgettable characters that inspire and amaze, Condé's blending of memoir and imagination, detective work and storytelling artistry, is a literary gem that readers won't soon forget.
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Customer Reviews
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
4.0 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
race & class in the French Caribbean, Jun 29 2010
By D. Kanter - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Victoire: My Mother's Mother (Hardcover)
Victoire is one of the best novels about the French colonial experience in the Caribbean. Maryse Conde focuses here on the generations after slavery, especially those individuals and families who pushed themselves up from peasantry, isolation, and illiteracy and into an emerging black middle class. They called themselves "les grandes negres" and built their new social class upon money to some extent, but especially upon literacy, respectability, and contact with the "mother country", France--not Africa. Conde takes on a relatively obscure era and brings it to life. The title character personifies the ways that natal alienation (Dr. Orlando Patterson's phrase) could continue for women of color, well beyond slavery's end.
Another reviewer complains about the passages in French. While I have not studied French, it was quite clear to me that Conde puroposely includes many passages in creole. I was fascinated by creole's distinctiveness from metropolitan French. While I may have missed some details, the French and creole passages never proved an obstacle in following the plot and illustrated the class and cultural differences that typified the era.
A strong novel on the historic black experience. Should interest fans of Toni Morrison and Andrea Levy.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Condé has done it again..., Jun 26 2010
By J. Johnson - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Victoire: My Mother's Mother (Hardcover)
"Victoire" has solidified my reason for loving Maryse Condé. I love her style of writing, I felt like a fly on the wall throughout the entire novel. Well done.
5 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Avid Reader, Mar 3 2010
By M. Omar "Avid Reader" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: Victoire: My Mother's Mother (Hardcover)
It was just okay. I think the book went back and forth too much in the French language for someone who doesn't understand French. If there was a translation line, it would have been more helpful. It was uncomfortable to read and not know what the author was talking about. The story of her grandmother was interesting and the settings she described helped me visualize the scenes. Especially somewhere i've never visited. However, it was a good one time read.
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