The Seamstress in Around the World

Apr 11, 2012 Suzanne rated it really liked it

Shelves: fiction, around-my-bookshelf-year-1, geocaching-challenge-2016

I'm on a mission to find a novel with a Latin American setting that I can actually enjoy. I carefully do the research, pick up books with great ratings, only to slam them down in disappointment. I was very hopeful when I started this book.

The novel takes place in Brazil during the 1920's, where two sisters (both seamstresses), end up living lives that could not be more polar opposite of each other. Luzia dos Santos, escapes the mountainside by marrying a young legal scholar from a fine family in ...more

1 like · Like · see review

May 16, 2010 Julia rated it liked it

Shelves: brasilian, romantic, historic-fiction

Very readable - great historical fiction written in a fluid prose by Frances de Pontes Peebles....I really liked the characters, they seemed both interesting and unusual, but were still credible, especially Luzia's slow drifting into violence was psychologically well-done

I've learned quite much about the thirties in northeastern Brazil, its culture, the nature and also a little bit of politics - Pontes Peebles admits that she's simplified political events, and she's done a good job (maybe Umbert ...more

Like · see review

May 17, 2010 Janine rated it it was amazing

Wonderful read. Flowing, never boring, quite dramatic story that takes you into the Brazilian state of Pernambuco intertwining the lives of two sisters surrounded by political turmoil striving to overcome what seems to be a destiny of poverty and insecurity. Both accomplished it in a certain way - one finds acceptance and a man she thought she would never have, and the other found herself in a better economical situation but without love. This was a great summer-read for me, and the 600+ pages s ...more

Like · see review