Word: emilios
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...Brien meets Mariela Montez, whom he marries and takes home to the States. Margarita, the first of their fifteen children, is born at sea on route to America. Her recollections form the backbone of the novel, which recounts the fate of the fourteen sisters and the one brother. Emilio...
Hijuelos' deliciously extravagant imagination declares its presence on every page. His style is impassioned and almost impossibly lyrical. Often bawdy, Fourteen Sisters is also beautiful, reflective and wise. Particularly memorable is the birth of Emilio, who "descended out of the heaven of his mother's womb, through clouds of Cuban and Irish humors, slipping into this feminine universe at half past ten in an upstairs bedroom brilliant with sunlight, surrounded by the chatting, nervous, delighted, and overwhelming female presences that were his sisters...
...style suffers as well. As the sprawling novel winds down, Hijuelos' lyricism appears to run out of steam. The disappointing ending feels a little contrived. But this failure is insignificant, and serves to underscore the magnificent, visionary achievement of the rest of the novel. With The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O' Brien Oscar Hijuelos has given American readers a vibrantly imagined history of their nation...
...title characters of the book, and there is much female activity, including cooking, childbearing and lovemaking, but Hijuelos is much too macho a writer to surrender himself entirely to a feminine -- don't even think about feminist -- world. Thus a big chunk of the book focuses on brother Emilio's exploits as he fights in Italy during World War II, beds his way through postwar Greenwich Village, beats the odds in Hollywood, where he plays Tarzan and Sam Spade-style detectives in B movies, and eventually gains fame as a celebrity photographer...
...mass executions and other atrocities. With its 800-page final report, the commission confirmed that 85% of the war crimes were committed by government-directed anticommunist forces, including the Salvadoran army and free-lance death squads, backed in some cases by wealthy, conservative citizens. The report accuses General Rene Emilio Ponce, the current Defense Minister, of plotting the 1989 murder of six Jesuit priests and two others. Leftist F.M.L.N. rebels, the commission concluded, also carried out assassinations and kidnappings, but more selectively. The commission recommended that 40 military officers be suspended immediately and that five F.M.L.N. leaders be barred from...