Hunger's Brides - Softcover

Paul Anderson

3.6

152 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0679312005 ISBN 13: 9780679312000

Publisher: Random House of Canada, Limited, 2005

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On a frigid winter's night, a man escapes from an apartment in which a young woman lies bleeding. In his hands he clutches a box he has found there. He is Donald Gregory, a once-respected college professor and serial adulterer, whose last affair has left his career in ruins. She is Beulah Limosneros, one of his students and for a brief time his lover. She had disappeared into Mexico two years earlier, following her obsession with Sor Juana In�s de la Cruz, who was born in 1648, entered a convent at age nineteen, and became the greatest poet of her time, only to die of plague in 1695. As a police investigation closes in around Gregory, he examines the box's contents, fearful of incriminating evidence Beulah may have against him—translated poems of Sor Juana, a travel journal, research notes on the Spanish conquest of the Americas and the Inquisition, diary entries concerning him, and a strange manuscript about Sor Juana. Based on the life of one of literature's most compelling figures, Paul Anderson's astonishing debut unveils a great poet's withdrawal from the world who at the height of her creative powers signs a vow of contrition in her own blood.

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From Publishers Weekly:

A nearly 1,500-page novel that was 12 years in the making deserves consideration, even though in this instance, its complex central story could have been told in 500 pages. Sor Juana In�s de la Cruz died of the plague in Mexico in 1695, and for the next two centuries her work was rarely referenced or read. Her poems, confessions and life story were rediscovered in the 20th century, most notably by Mexican poet Octavio Paz. In Anderson's elephantine debut novel, Sor Juana's story is told through the testimony of her "secretary," Antonia Mora (her intellectual equal), Carlos Sig�enza y Gongora (a rival and a suitor), her confessor, Father N��ez (an enemy), and Sor Juana herself. We follow her fortunes from her illegitimate birth, through her inability to find success as a poet and scholar (due both to her gender and the authoritarian nature of colonial Mexican society), her taking of the veil and-finally-her downfall. As if distrusting his material, however, Anderson encloses Sor Juana's story within a contemporary tale focused on Beulah Limosneros, a brilliant but unstable student of Sor Juana's writing who begins an affair with Donald Gregory, her married English professor. With Gregory, Beulah re-enacts the scorned woman role � la Fatal Attraction with a passive-aggressive twist. Beulah keeps a journal that is a mixture of sophomoric beat poetry and mystical descriptions of sex. She is the embodiment of present day angst: there are food issues, childhood abuse, low self-esteem. There are hundreds too many pages of her interior life. The conjunction of Limosneros's story and Sor Juana's is mutually weakening. Still, the central narration is definitely worth following, particularly for its version of the inevitable conflict between beauty, intellect and government power. Unfortunately, the framing story is ludicrous; this is no Pale Fire. Sor Juana's translated verse doesn't jump out (despite some translations by Paz), but her confession does, as does the way Anderson conveys the gradual closing in of forces beyond her control, reminiscent of Akhmatova's confrontations with Stalin.
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From Booklist:

Talk about irony: a sojourn in Mexico writing short stories prompted Canadian writer Anderson to render one of the longest books in recent memory. Twelve years in the making, this dizzying debut is more than a magnum opus; it's a mega-magnum opus. Lyrical, provocative, and painstakingly detailed, the novel follows the lives of two child prodigies separated by three centuries: real-life seventeenth-century poet Juana Ines de la Cruz, who entered a convent at age 19 and later took a vow of silence, and fictional Canadian Beulah Limosneros, a moody, modern-day scholar singularly obsessed with the nun's tragic life. Ranging from excerpts from Sor Juana's luminous verse to Beulah's complex relationship with her shadowy, seductive professor, Anderson's narrative revolves around the question, "Why would a genius withdraw from the world?" Blending history, mystery, and theology, Anderson simultaneously ponders and honors the life of a little-known poet who inspired the likes of Robert Graves, Diane Ackerman, and Octavio Paz. It takes a special breed of reader to brave this book: one with steely determination and strong arms, too (Anderson's Canadian publisher joked about selling a lectern or reading table along with the tome). Alas, even the most devoted bibliophiles will wonder if the subject matter of this never-ending story warrants its mind-numbing length. Allison Block
Copyright � American Library Association. All rights reserved

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