The Hacienda : My Venezuelan Years - Softcover

De Teran, Lisa St. Aubin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1860494595 ISBN 13: 9781860494598

Publisher: Virago Press Limited, 1998

Synopsis

Married at sixteen to a man twenty years her senior who spoke no English, she was taken to his ancestral home and estate where she found herself living in the most primitive of conditions, isolated and alone. St. Aubin de Teran ended up virtually running the plantation that belonged to her increasingly demented husband but enjoyed learning the mores and magic of a place that had remained practically unchanged for more than a century. Written in mesmerising prose, this is the extraordinary story of a young woman surviving by her wits and fantasies.

About this title

Review

A child bride leaves England for a life of unimaginable cruelty, isolation, and beauty in this memoir that reads like the most magical of novels. Married at the age of 17, Lisa St. Aubin de Terán hardly knows her Venezuelan husband Jaime--and learns Spanish only to find that he seldom speaks in that language, either. Nonetheless, he persuades her to return with him to his hacienda, a sugar-cane and avocado plantation perched high in the Andean foothills. Here, her romantic notions of South American life soon wash away in the constant drizzle; the hacienda lies in near-ruins, and her husband's relatives treat her like a pariah--and a half-witted one at that. Jaime disappears for days, then weeks at a time, leaving her without food or money in a leaky, tin-roofed shack, surrounded by peasants who make the sign against the evil eye at her approach. In the years to come, St. Aubin de Terán finds inner reserves of strength she didn't know she possessed, learning to run the hacienda, earning the respect of la gente, bearing a daughter, and, most importantly, discovering the pleasures and consolations of writing. Meanwhile, her husband descends into unpredictable fits of violence and rage, and as his madness escalates, the increasingly ill and weak St. Aubin de Terán must find a way to smuggle herself and her daughter out of the country before he murders them both. Without resorting to either sentiment or self-pity, St. Aubin de Terán has created a loving portrait of a place and people that seem lifted from another century entirely.

About the Author

Lisa St. Aubin de Teran was born in south London in 1953. She is a prize-winning author and has published five novels.

About this edition

• Publisher: Virago Press Limited
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 1860494595
• ISBN 13: 9781860494598
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352