Rara Avis

By Jacqueline Bograd Weld

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1885983298
• ISBN13: 9781885983299
• Release Date: October 1998
• Publisher: Turtle Point Press
• Length: 191 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.2" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

IMAGINATIVE AND ENTERTAINING...but GARCIA MARQUEZ it's not

...and that being said, I really enjoyed this novel. I have to agree with the review below, that the saucy language of Soraida the parrot seemed completely in character with her personality (as developed in the book) -- her language, in fact (including heaping foul insulting names upon the president), was one of the things that most upset her critics, bringing about the trial that is the focus of the book. The entire premise would have been altered if our feathered friend's foul language had been omitted or truncated.The family at the center of the story -- the Romandias -- is a privileged one, with each member possessed of his or her own unique eccentricity. The mother sits all day rocking in a chair, rarely speaking. The grandmother covers herself -- and anyone who gets too close -- with dusting powder. One of the uncles manufactures bowler hats -- then, upon coming to the lightning-like flash that they're not going to be very popular in the heat of the South American tropics, switches to designing brassieres. Another uncle is obsessed with chess -- he has games in progress (between himself and 'the manual') all over the house. The father is a flirting, seemingly inept aristocrat. The housekeeper believes in all manner of demons and spirits. The two girls -- one of which is our narrator, looking back at the events here from a fever in her old age -- are unschooled, and unlike any children you will have encountered anywhere.The magistrate's central question -- to which he returns again and again during the 'trial' -- is 'What sort of family is this?' The family members look at each other and shrug helplessly -- it is up to Soraida, the amazingly, fantastically sentient parrot who has lived with them 'for generations' to speak on their behalf. And speak she does. She launches into nothing less than a history of the family going back for hundreds of years, intertwining it with her own view of the history of the New World -- throwing in many of her own spicy diatribes and verbal poison darts along the way, directed at those who dare to sit in judgement of 'these dreamers, these innocents', as she calls the Romandias.All of the events depicted in the book take place over the course of a single day -- with the exception of a few musings by our narrator, looking back through her fever at that day 'long ago'. The country where the story takes place is never called by name, but the Orinoco River is mentioned -- and it comes up that the children's mother came from Argentina. Still, I was left with a definite feeling of being out of time as well as place while reading this alternately frightening and amusing tale.Soraida is an unforgettable character -- certainly unlike any bird the reader is likely to come across anywhere in 'this' world.

A witty, sassy irreverent book in the magical realism genre

I can't believe any reader except Mrs. Grundy would be upset by a few apropriately racy words from a parrot's mouth. I found Rara Avis witty, evocative, and engrossing from start to finish, and read it in a single sitting. The author belongs in the ranks of Garcia Marquez, Isable Allende, Laura Esquivel and Vargas Llosa and adds a sassy American irreverence to their genre. Even the design of the book and the paper is a delight. As elegant as the writing.