My Darling Dead Ones by Erika de Vasconcelos

I won this book as a door prize. Well, actually I selected it from a pile of door prizes. Everyone else left it behind which surprised me greatly because it has a lovely, evocative cover that looks like old letters and photos wrapped in ribbon, but when I looked at it closely and read the title I thought, oh yeah, that dead bit scares them off.

There isn't a whole lot about the dead ones in this book, but rather a vibrant portrayal of several generations of women in one family. It says on the cover "the connections that remain when you move from a European past to a North American present" - kind of a dry way of saying immigrant girls will like this book lots. Of course we'll all love the stories of grandmothers and great-aunts living intense love lives in Portugal best, with all the nuances and mythic overtones, but the North American present is alright too, if a bit less loaded with imagery, but nonetheless highly realistic. A kind of Joy Luck Club for the Portugese Canadians.

This is a feminist novel, one that treats men as background colour the way women have been treated for years - very refreshing. The men of course still cause lots of trouble and agony thus are pivotal to the plot but we don't have to worry about them or follow their lives. And there are cycles within the family that seem to be repeating themselves. But the respect given to the lives of the women here, that is admirable.

My mother swore to my great-aunt on her deathbed that I would write her story in a book one day. My great-aunt passed away smiling and I turned to my mother in horror and said "how could you tell her that? I don't know anything about her life!". But this novel gives me courage that if I did gather old letters and notes, there is a way to do it.

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