The Turkish Lover

商家名称	信用等级	购买信息	订购本书
		The Turkish Lover
		The Turkish Lover

基本信息·出版社：Da Capo Press
·页码：352 页
·出版日期：2004年08月
·ISBN：0738208205
·International Standard Book Number：0738208205
·条形码：9780738208206
·EAN：9780738208206
·装帧：精装
·正文语种：英语

内容简介 在线阅读本书

Along with Sandra Cisneros and Julia Alvarez, Esmeralda Santiago has emerged as one of today's preeminent Latina authors. Legions of fans have waited five long years for the next chapter of the story begun in her memoirs When I Was Puerto Rican and Almost a Woman. And now the wait is over. In The Turkish Lover, Esmeralda finally breaks out of a monumental struggle with her powerful mother-only to come under the thrall of "the Turk" and discover that romantic passion, too, can become a prison. Esmeralda's journey of self-liberation and self-discovery is a daring one, candidly and zestfully recounted, and leads, most improbably, to her triumphant graduation from Harvard. (Her view of that venerable institution is an eye opener, told as only a brilliant writer totally outside the mold can tell it.) The expansive humanity, earthy humor, and psychological courage that made Esmeralda's first two books so successful are on full display again in The Turkish Lover, which will both reward the author's faithful readership and extend it. Hers is a fresh, exciting, and necessary voice. A Merloyd Lawrence Book
作者简介 Esmeralda Santiago lives in Westchester County, New York. Born in Puerto Rico, she moved to Brooklyn with her ten siblings and unmarried mother, who supported them all. Her amazing life is chronicled in her memoirs, one volume of which- Almost a Woman -was made into a film for PBS's Masterpiece Theater.
媒体推荐 "An absorbing story; the characters are well developed and jump off the page" -- Roanoke Times 11/21/04

"An intensely inward-looking, emotionally charged story." -- 10/17/04

"Santiago exposes with crisp clarity her struggle to extricate herself from a lover...[she] writes with understated grace." -- Library Journal 9/15/04

"Santiago is an engaging writer...captivating and impressive." -- Hispanic 9/1/04

"Santiago's life...is fascinating and inspiring." -- New York Times Book Review 11/7/04

"The best kind of storytelling-real, rollicking, and wrenching." -- Grand Rapids Press 11/21/04

"This interesting story will keep readers wanting to know what happens next...Santiago's descriptions are rich." -- ForeWord November 2004

"[Santiago] has forged a remarkable life and career that readers cannot help but follow." -- Washington Post Book World 9/5/04

After memorably describing her journey from a Puerto Rican barrio to acceptance at a prestigious New York high school in When I Was Puerto Rican (1993) and Almost a Woman (1998), the author now vividly recalls the long infatuation that put her life on hold in the '70s. As usual, Santiago writes well, but this latest memoir at times seems labored and overly self-absorbed. Though she is still nostalgic for Puerto Rico and her family, she seems quite nonchalant about keeping in touch. She is also quick to discern ethnic prejudice, though she has vast numbers of supportive Anglo friends and ultimately benefits from affirmative action. Fundamentally, her problem is more the usual one of loving the wrong man too much. Just 21, her dancing career on hold, she decides to move to Florida with Ulvi, a much older Turkish man. She knows her action will shock her mother, who, though never married herself, hopes her daughter will wed, but Santiago is too much in love to care. Ulvi remains a cipher: he has directed or produced (Santiago never really knows) a famous Turkish movie he now wants to distribute in the US and is going to Florida to raise funds. He never gets the money in the seven years of their relationship, though he makes countless mysterious trips and phone calls. He forbids Santiago to answer the phone, and she supports him when he goes back to graduate school in Texas and New York. While he studies, Santiago works, does his research, types his papers, and writes up his notes. Though he refuses to marry her, Ulvi is insanely jealous, dictating what she should wear and whom she should befriend. Santiago increasingly feels stifled, but only begins to liberate herself when a colleague suggests she apply to Harvard. She is accepted and slowly begins to reclaim her independence. More an extended whine than a paean to pluck. (Kirkus Reviews)
专业书评 From Publishers Weekly

"I will teach you everything," says Santiago's lover, the Turkish filmmaker Ulvi Dogan. "But you must listen to what I say." Thus begins the deftly understated saga of an intense, abusive relationship in Santiago's third memoir. When I Was Puerto Rican (1993) and Almost a Woman (1998) examined Santiago's Puerto Rican childhood, her adolescence in New York and her emerging acting career, when Dogan spots her in a phone booth and offers her an audition. Santiago revisits their seven-year relationship with uncommon candor and directness. Dogan controls Santiago's every moment, yet Santiago believes he "was gentle and understanding" of why she couldn't always obey him. In their nomadic lives (Fort Lauderdale, Fla.; New York; Syracuse, N.Y.; Lubbock, Tex.), they make up and break up as Santiago devotes herself to Dogan's graduate studies and career. But when a traffic jam unexpectedly delivers them to Harvard Square, Santiago blurts out, "I belong here." So it happens that at 25, she enters Harvard. It's the beginning of the end with a man who "might love me, as he claimed, but he had no idea, no clue whatsoever, of what was important to me." Although there's nothing here to delight readers seeking a vicarious dip into another culture (which When I Was Puerto Rican provided), Santiago's latest will grow on readers. Her slow self-realization is deeply human.
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