My Booklist Review is here:
“Start with a broth of magic realism à la Gabriel García Márquez, toss in a soupçon of William Golding’s Lord of the Flies, add a twist of the musical play Brigadoon and even some ingredients from the Book of Genesis, and then top off with some borrowings from post-revolutionary France, and you have a first novel that is not a derivative pot of unintegrated elements but an inventively rich stew. The author envisions a village in Colombia as the sad, even tragic victim of civil war when the isolated community is invaded one day by partisan troops, who march off all the men and boys, leaving the women to fend for themselves. As man-less weeks turn into months, a utopian society emerges; the women find roles suitable to their tastes and talents. But, alas, the new society begins to mirror all societies: pettiness and disagreements and out-and-out fights rend the new fabric. The characterizations are drawn as compellingly as the storyline itself, which simply gets increasingly delicious as the pages turn.”
—Booklist
