Tivolem - Softcover

Rangel-Ribeiro, Victor

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140279229 ISBN 13: 9780140279221

Publisher: South Asia Books, 1998

Synopsis

Goa, on the western coast of India, is an isolated area settled by Portuguese fishermen. It is the blending of old-world Christian culture with traditional Indian society that makes life in Tivolem, a village in Goa, so unique.
Against this backdrop, Rangel-Ribeiro focuses on young Marie-Santana, who finds sanctuary in the quiet daily life of Tivolem after her family moved abroad many years earlier. Returning home from the heartbreak and betrayal inflicted by her former fiance, Marie-Santana finds Tivolem filled with eccentric personalities and a multitude of unexpected adventures. While caring for her elderly grandmother, Marie-Santana becomes attracted to her next-door neighbor, Simon Fernandes. But a past deceit involving Simon's far-flung brother and the censure of village gossips threaten the lovers and remind them that they - like the village - are inexorably tied to their pasts.

About this title

Review

The New York Times Book Review
"The Indian journalist Victor Rangel-Ribiero has waited until his early 70's to offer his own slice of the fertile literary landscape of the subcontinent. His first novel, ''Tivolem,'' is set in 1933 in the Portuguese colony of Goa on the west coast of India. Here, in the tiny village that gives the book its title, his characters gather around the lone shortwave radio for news from Europe and even India, reminded by the sirens from distant ships ''of oceans ever to be crossed, of events beyond our control.'' While the outside world is full of drama, little seems to happen in Tivolem. So it's all the more exciting when a woman named Marie-Santana returns to the village after the death of her parents in Mozambique (and 23 years after she left as a young girl), trailed by a whiff of scandal and the ''very long shadow'' of a former fiance. Now the town gossips have something to occupy them -- and they have even more to talk about when Simon Fernandes, Marie-Santana's violin-playing neighbor (who has also recently returned from abroad), begins serenading her each night. Ultimately, Simon's link to the secrets of Marie-Santana's past helps teach her, as one of the characters puts it, that ''our lives themselves are like the crossings and recrossings of a river.'' Reflecting this wisdom, the novel ambles along at an unhurried pace, reveling in the small but resonant happenings of a faraway time and place." - Andrew Tepper, The New York Times

The Philadelphia Inquirer
"VictorRangel-Ribeiro... evokes vivid memories of 1930s Goa in his recent novel, Tivolem,winner of the Milkweed National Fiction Prize... Rangel-Ribeiro'sTivolem clearly captures one expatriate's lustrous memory of home with enormousverisimilitude.... In the increasingly chic territory of Indian fiction marked byArundhati Roy's poetic idiosyncrasy and Salman Rushdie's magicintellectual-ism, Rangel-Ribeiro anchors his debut novel in old-fashionedrealism... Tivolem gently evokes the well-made fiction of an earlier age." The Philadelphia Inquirer

The novel ambles along at an unhurried pace, reveling in the small but resonant happenings of a faraway time and place. -- The New York Times Book Review, Anderson Tepper

From Kirkus Reviews

Longtime US resident Rangel-Ribeiro, a native of Goa who turned to fiction at age 72, debuts with a tale that luminously evokes life in that former Portuguese colony in India. The pace of this Narayan-like novel is sweetly contemplative, as befits the doings in the small backwater village of Tivolem, where everybody's business is everybodys business. The year is 1933, and while reports of external eventsthe rise of Hitler, Gandhis mounting protests, and the engulfing Great Depression in Americaare indeed discussed by local luminaries at their leisure, striking now and then a discordant note, the emphasis remains on the village and whosoever happens to live in it. One of those is the 35-year-old Marie-Santana, whos returned to the home of her grandmother after spending decades abroad in Mozambique, where her family had emigrated. Marie-Santanas arrival sparks all sorts of rumors: She's rich, she's had an abortion, andmost sensationally and hurtfullyshe possesses the evil eye. Strange things do happen when she's around: a child becomes ill, the previously unbesmirched fruit spoils, and an accident befalls the mailman, who had loved her as a child. Also back home after years away is Simon, a violinist, former bureaucrat, and current next-door neighbor of Marie-Santana. As the year progresses, the two are gradually drawn to each other. Along the way, though, both must confront their pasts, which appear oddly linked by a common theme, since a fair-skinned man once conned Marie-Santana into loving him and then embezzled her money, while Simon had a fair-colored brother who ran away from home. Once personal history has been properly acknowledged, love is duly allowed to conquer all. Awaiting a wedding feast, even the meddlesome villagers are forgiven. A story to be savored, and winner of the 1998 Milkweed Editions Fiction Prize. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: South Asia Books
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0140279229
• ISBN 13: 9780140279221
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 200