Beautifully written historical fiction of three generations of resilient women in Uruguay, from the early 1900s through the 1980s. Started slowly, by the end I could not put it down.

TW: physical & sexual abuse/assault

It took me a few days to settle into this
book, but then I fell hard for it. And cried a lot at the end. One of my favourite reds this year.

Part of me really loved this book beyond the rating I gave it, but the issues I had with small parts of it just won't go away.

The story centres around three generations of women in the one family and we get their story one after the other. We start with Parajita, a miracle child who meets a young Venetian gondola maker when he comes to Uruguay and quickly marries him. The two are young and in love and for a while their lives are blissful until real life invades and the spectres from Ignazio's Venetian childhood gets in the way when Parajita falls pregnant. They have children, but soon cracks appear in their marriage as Ignazio starts drinking and gambling and it culminates one night when he hits Parajita and flees the house in shame leaving her to raise the children herself. Parajita starts earning money and having an independent life as she raises her children until one day Ignazio returns, wanting to prove himself to her.

Once the family is eventually reconciled their daughter, Eva, quits school and goes to work for a friend of her father's. No one is aware at the time that her father's friend has less than pure intentions with the child and by the time that Eva realises what has happened, she has left it too late. The man gives Eva a pair of shoes, and uses them as evidence of her stealing from him when she runs home after the first time he assaults her and tells her parents that that is why she ran home before she could explain anything and making it impossible for her to refuse to go back.

This section of the book was quite difficult to read and Eva, from a child suffering so cruely, to the adult who is estranged from her father and running away from home with a childhood friend is an interesting character. I must confess though, for much of her section when she arrives in Argentina and then when she returns to Uruguay with her own family, I found her a very difficult character to like and it bothered me her behaviour to her husband who had given up so much for her.

One of the main things that bothered me about this book was that it seemed impossible for a strong female character to be strong unless it was contrasted by a weak male and this was particularly evident in Eva's marriage. We are met with her husband, a good man, a doctor, someone who went against expectation to provide her a good home that she manipulated into marrying her. She then, in a fit of rebellion, manages to make it impossible for them to remain in their home and then blames him as she starts an affair with the friend she had originally ran away to Argentina with who is now a transexual and refuses to return to Argentina when they are able. It's complicated, but perhaps it was just me, but I just found Eva, for the most part, hard to root for despite her tragic childhood.

The final part of the story centres on Salome, Eva's daughter who is quiet and studious and suddenly finds her self engulfed in a revolution. She starts full of great ideas and beliefs, but eventually brutal reality catches up and she gets captured, tortured, raped and imprisoned, refusing to flee when the rest of her group does because she's pregnant and thus being imprisoned for years only to come out years later to find out life has moved on. The man she loved and had a relationship with before has moved on and married one of the women who had been imprisoned with her, her friends have all moved on, her family is all older and her daughter is now in America being raised by her brother.

There was a lot about this book that I loved, the very end few scenes are beautiful and the characterisation is always good and each of the women have a very distinctive character (for better or worse.) My main issue was the way the writer wrote the men in the book. Outwith Ignazio and to a lesser degree Roberto, the male characters in the book were at best one dimensional and inferior and I say this as a woman, but I don't need to have strong women at the expense of strong men - it defeats the purpose for me.

This book is definite worth a read though. The issues I had with it don't detract from the story or how hard it is to put it down at times.

Wonderful characterization, but with each generation their lives were more detailed; I wanted some fill-in for the first two generations.

"But girls don't become exactly what they're shaped to be..."

First off, I'd like to exorcise a song that's been stuck in my head for a couple weeks--when my parents saw me reading this, they started singing Donovan's "There Is a Mountain," and every time I picked this up since, it would loop in my head incessantly. Maybe I'm free now?

But seriously, this is a wonderful book. It is lush and evocative, set primarily in Montevideo and focusing on the cultural and political life of Uruguayans. I was also utterly ignorant of this country--part of the reason I chose it for this year's Read Harder challenge--so all the events were shocking and enthralling, sending me to do some research of my own. It was painful for me to take so long to read it because every time I opened the book, I just wanted to curl up on the couch with a cup of hot tea and lose myself in the atmosphere and tumultuous lives of Pajarita, Eva, and Salomé. (This is saying something for me--a light spoiler alert/trigger warning:

Spoiler

each woman suffers physical and sexual assault as well as psychological abuse

--if I wasn't so invested in their lives, I would have had to put it down.)

It was a slow burn of a book, I must admit...there is SO MUCH covered in 360 pages. I would say it is plot-driven, and this bugged me a little in the beginning as I felt I needed to get to know the characters a little better. However, as it went on, the characters deepened (at least for Eva and Salomé--perhaps Pajarita is meant to remain inscrutable), and by the end, I was crying for everyone in the book. I was wondering how De Robertis would wrap up these storylines by the end, and boy, did she ever...and so beautifully.

I first became acquainted with De Robertis after reading her essay, "Every Day of Her Life," in [b: Count on Me: Tales of Sisterhoods and Fierce Friendships|13259259|Count on Me Tales of Sisterhoods and Fierce Friendships|Las comadres para las Americas|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1339799786s/13259259.jpg|18460758], and after this, I am certain I will be reading the rest of her work. I can't wait to lose myself again.

********
Read Harder: A book set in Central or South America, written by a Central or South American author

Not only was this written by one of my oldest friends, but it's also a terrific novel. Beautiful writing and a fabulous story! Bravo, Caro!

The Invisible Mountain is a fantastic debut novel in the tradition of such Latin American authors as Isabel Allende and Gabriel Garcia Marquez (though it doesn't quite reach his caliber).

De Robertis tells the story of three generations of women in Uruguay. There is a touch of magic realism in the beginning, as if in homage to authors that came before. From there, the story becomes more grounded in historically based political upheavel and tyrrany.

I listened to this (the narrator was spectacular), but I wish I'd read it to savor the descriptions of Uruguay and these women's lives. It is a heartbreaking, infuriating read at times, but very well done. I look forward to reading more by De Robertis in the future.

This is saga of the Firielli’s family as told by the grandmother Pajarita, her daughter Eva and her granddaughter Salome.

During Pjarita life and her marriage with Ignazio, the author introduces the glamorous city of Montevideo before Word War I.

Page 27: Monte. Vide. Eu. I see a mountain, said the first Portuguese man to sight this terrain from sea.

Just for clarification, Montevideo has only a low hill.

However after the Great War, the Uruguay's economical breakdown just begin.

Her daughter Eva has a passion for poetry in order to surpass her sad and cruel childhood. After her marriage, she moves to Buenos Aires during the Peron's regime in Argentina. During the birth hood of her daughter Salome, she meets Eduardo Guevara, who became afterwards the famous partisan Che Guevara .

Some hints of Getulio Vargas regime in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is also briefly described.

However, it's Salome’s life who captivates the reader, showing during her work at the American embassy in Montevideo, how she became part of the Tupamaros.

The Tupamaros (Movimiento de Liberación Nacional-Tupamaros) was an urban guerrilla organization during the 60's-70's in Uruguay. Similar organizations were held in Brazil and Argentina as well in order to fight their political dictatorship.

Samole was 15 years old and stayed in prison during 13 years.

I won't spoil the whole story but I do recommend this book for those interested on Latin American history, which was magnificently portrayed by Carolina De Robertis.

Really enjoyed this novel of 3 generations of women living in south america and you feel the atmosphere and passions of the characters in Robertis novel from rio, buenos aires to montevideo and with at times with the background of polticial dictatorships