Tivolem

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.

Despite its fascinating setting and artless charm, 72-year-old Victor Rangel-Ribeiro's first novel finally suffers from its clumsy prose, stilted dialogue and heavy sentimentality. In the early 1930s, Marie-Santana returns to her native village of Tivolem, in the Portuguese colony of Goa, after a 23-year absence. Orphaned, penniless and bearing the unhealed wounds of her past, Marie meets and falls in love with another recently returned prodigal, retired civil servant and amateur violinist Simon Fernandes. Their story threads together a maze of Goan vignettes and minor characters, many of them well drawn (a digression into the exploits of an unrepentant petty thief almost steals the show). Rangel-Ribeiro has a trove of stories (na?ve fairy tales at best, facile mysticism at worst), but these moments never quite justify the novel's conservative Catholic conclusion. Although historical events of 1933 filter into the novel's world via the radio of a nouveau-riche landowner, the village remains largely untouched by history. Readers ignorant of Goa and Portuguese colonialism in general would come away with the image of one big, mostly happy, multicultural family under the protection of the Catholic church. Author tour. (June) FYI: Tivolem won the 1998 Milkweed Prize for Fiction. The author is the former music director of the Beethoven Society of New York.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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.