The Read Around The World Book Club discussion

Final thoughts

I am half way through the novel and my feelings towards Maria have not changed. I feel horrible for women in her situation. Dreadful. Yet, she simply annoys me. I cannot help myself. I try to find something engaging about her but alas, no.

After I reached the halfway point I can no longer bring myself to pick it up. I shall leave this for now.

I've just finished the book.... in the last part it seems to me it just changed into a full blown Venezuelan romance, lost even the value of providing details about Venezuelan society of that time etc. It was also way too dense for what it was, in my opinion

I've just finished the book, mainly because I was too stubborn to dnf it, so I kept pushing through. This was not a book for me. I was seriously bored most of the time; the story was so incredibly slow and I didnt care much for the detailed depiction of Maria's life.

I don’t think this is a quick read. I’ll take my time with it, because even though the story and protagonist are not the most delectable... there’s something about Teresa de la Parra’s writing that enchanted me.

Majdouline could not post and asked me to post this for her.

Hi every one, I have just finished the book and would like to share my opinion which is slightly different of yours as I did enjoy the book. I did so for external reason first one of my aim by joining this book club is to read books that I never heard of from countries that I am not familair with and that has been achieved with Iphigenia.The 2 nd factor is the books that I have been reading lately in english were mainly essays so I really really enjoyed the written style of Iphigenia. I did find a lot of musicality in the text and I really enjoyed as well the sense of humour and the description nature, street ans atmosphere. Now come my opinion on the content I did not feel connected to Maria Eugenia but this is not important for me , Madame Bovary with Flaubert is super self- absorbed but I did enjoyed the book. I thought that Maria Eugenia is a realistic characters, she portrays well a young immature girl who has no strong reference, trying to seek for her happiness facing countless challenges. I feel that when you have no choice its easier to lie to yourself to make the unbearable bearable..and this aspect of psychology is well painted in the novel. I was also very interested by the grand mother and the aunt as the biggest supporter of machism society are often women themselves. All in all I would have given a 3 star.