Eccentric Neighborhoods

With humor, nostalgia and fateful irony, Puerto Rican novelist Ferre (The House on the Lagoon was an NBA finalist) breathes life into the story of two prominent Puerto Rican families living in the first half of the century during the sugarcane aristocracy's last days. In what often amounts to an imaginary family portrait gallery, narrator Elvira Vernet describes three generations of her forbears: on her mother's side, landed gentry of the central Plata; on her father's side, powerful, politically ambitious builders who flourished during the 1940s when the U.S began to pour federal money into housing and municipal projects. Although the island's recent political history (including visits by Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt) is engagingly related, love and family politics are Ferre's subjects, and the heart of the novel is its female characters--especially the budding feminist Elvira and her angry, intelligent mother, Clarissa, frustrated because her education was intended only to make her a good wife. Elvira marries to escape her mother's influence and competition for her father's love, only to find herself bound to an equally traditional man who, with her mother's approval, stifles her spirit. Although Ferre spends too much of the middle of the novel introducing new characters and subplots, she prunes the sprawl in the final section, which focuses on Elvira's love-hate relationship with her family's past. This rich saga is artfully told, sprinkled with bits of pure poetry and carefully shaped by Ferre's sharp prose. Author tour. (Feb.)