The Invisible Mountain

Starred review from June 29, 2009
The history of Uruguay through the 20th century sparks personal tragedies amid political intrigues and cultural upheavals in this enchanting, funny and heartbreaking debut novel. Three generations of women populate this sweeping saga: Pajarita, the miracle child who at the dawn of the new century disappears and then reappears in a tree, born twice, as the residents of her small town say; Eva, Pajarita's daughter, who suffers a cruel childhood and learns to spin her painful experiences into a new life of art and adventure as a poet; and Salomé, seduced by communism and nearly losing everything fighting for the cause she believes will save her country. This novel is beautifully written yet deliberate in its storytelling. It gains momentum as the women's lives spin increasingly out of control while Uruguay sinks into war, economic instability and revolution. An extraordinary first effort whose epic scope and deft handling reverberate with the deep pull of ancestry, the powerful influence of one's country and the sacrifices of reinvention.

July 1, 2009
Miracles, poetry and guerilla fighters march through the 20th century in De Robertis' winning debut, a beautifully wrought novel of Uruguay.

On the first day of every new century, the village of Tacuarembž witnesses a miracle. Jan. 1, 1900, brings a baby found in the treetops; as she flies down to the arms of her grandmother she also finds her name: Pajarita, little bird. A few years later, Venetian immigrant Ignazio Firielli falls in with a troupe of magicians touring the countryside. He is thunderstruck by Pajarita, marries her a few days later and sweeps her off to Montevideo. Ignazio begins wandering, drinking, whoring and gambling their money away, so Pajarita supports their children by mixing herbal remedies, first for the women of her neighborhood, then for the whole city. When their daughter Eva is ten, Ignazio takes her out of school to work in a shoe shop, where the owner regularly rapes her in the storeroom on top of the shoe boxes. She finally escapes to La Diablita, a restaurant filled with revolutionaries and writers, and decides while waiting tables there to become a poet. Eva moves to Buenos Aires with her childhood friend Andrs, but he mysteriously disappears. She meets and marries Dr. Santos, who introduces her to a life of ease in a city dominated by the Perons and their promises. Eva gives birth to Roberto, Salom (whose delivery is aided by Ernesto Guevara) and hundreds of poems; when Argentina becomes too dangerous to write, love or breathe in, she returns with her children to Montevideo. There she encounters a woman named Zolá, who turns out to be Andrs after surgery, and the two fall in love. The final section follows Salom and her involvement with the Tupamaros, a revolutionary faction that attempted to overthrow Uruguay's dictatorship. Tortured and imprisoned for years, Salom returns to freedom and a transformed Montevideo in the novel's heartbreaking closing pages.

Dense and lush, filled with lyrical storytelling.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

Starred review from July 1, 2009
Words, so beautifully employed by first novelist De Robertis, seem inadequate to capture the essence of this twentieth-century Uruguayan woman-centered family saga, although its bare bones are straightforward. Pajarita, who had a miraculous second birth, learns herbal healing from the aunt who raises her, a talent that supports her family during the absences of her Venetian husband. Eva, Pajaritas daughter, grows up loving words and writing poems, which sustains her through sexual assault when shes 11, into marriage with the doctor who treats her hysterical paralysis, and eventual reunion with her true love. Salome, Evas daughter, is inspired by Che Guavara to give up university study for the revolutionary Tupamaros, which leads to her arrest, torture, and imprisonment, during which she bears a daughter conceived during a rape. With its historically accurate framework, this novel also portrays Montevideo so vividly that the city itself functions as a character. De Robertis is a skilled storyteller in relating the stories of these stalwart women, but it is her use of languagefrom the precision of poetry to the sensuality of sexthat makes this literary debut so exceptional.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)