Book Report/Review: Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo

Finished 2024/1/23 (Please, for the love of G-d stop buying books from Amazon)

If the gun is on the table, someone has to use it. It’s a common adage in writing because why else would the gun be there if not for use? Acevedo is the kind of writer who puts the gun up FRONT AND CENTER and my dumbass is like “oh wow what a nice centerpiece… wonder what it’s used for.”

In Family Lore Acevedo tells the story of the Martes, a Dominican family living in New York with a variety of supernatural powers. One sister can smell a lie, another has visions of death and that sister, Flor, has called for a living wake to celebrate her. The book is told from the perspective of Flor’s daughter, Anacaona (sp?) Ona for short, who is an anthropologist hoping to learn more about her family. It feels like a common story, especially now with Black people flocking to 23 and Me and other genealogy services but Acevedo leads the writer through the anthropology with a deft hand, using asides for Ona’s voice to jut in, often saying what the reader was thinking. 

Flor, Pastora, Matilde and Camila were sisters through thick and thin; Flor and Pastora’s daughters Ona and Yadi carried the torch. There are men in the family; namely the older brother Samuel but they are relatively inconsequential. Romance moves the plot, complicates it and reminds the reader that these are still people with desire but even the cheating man gets little air time. 

Planning a living wake for a woman who can see death brought up a lot of feelings for the family. In typical matriarch form, Flor barely noticed and had everyone buzzing around trying to quiet their own personal crises to give her the event she dreamed of. Ona is trying to conceive, Yadi’s high school love is out of jail, Pastora doesn’t want to admit that her sister is leaving her and Matilde’s man been cheating since the wedding night. Ay Dios mio!

The ride is a tight one. The book ends shortly after the main event takes place and only begins 6 weeks prior. This made me as a reader sad because other family epics get a few hundred more pages to give us some aftermath. I’m an impatient reader so the long family epic has not usually been my forte but Acevedo really made me crave more time with these characters. I want to know what will happen when Yadi finally heads back to the DR, and what really was the name of that Vieja auntie? I am so grateful that the publishing machine allowed this YA author space to write for grown folks but I can’t help but wonder what she could have done with a hundred more pages but maybe I’m just greedy.