Camille Pissarro’s family history

Awash with as much color and depth as as Pissaro painting, Alice Hoffman's "The Marriage of Opposites" tells the story of three generations of a family living in St. Thomas, including the famous painter Camille Pissaro.

With lyrical prose, Hoffman engages readers with multi-dimensional characters and a strong sense of place and time. While this historical fiction story includes a famous person, I loved that the real "star" of the novel is Rachel, Camille Pissaro's mother, a fascinating character in her own right -- not for historical reasons but simply by the way Hoffman created her. It seems Hoffman's message is that ordinary people are just as complex and fascinating as famous ones.

I also appreciated the different points of view in the book. From Rachel's point of view we see Camille as somewhat belligerent and disrespectful, while the same story from his point of view gives us an overbearing and inflexible mother.

The last Hoffman novel I read was [b:Turtle Moon|165840|Turtle Moon |Alice Hoffman|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/book/50x75-a91bf249278a81aabab721ef782c4a74.png|4030674] over 20 years ago. I don't know why I haven't read anything since. I've also been sitting on this book for almost a year without reading it! I truly enjoyed this one and guarantee I'll be reading more Hoffman in the future.

4.5 stars

Thank you to Simon & Schuster and NetGalley for a galley of this book in exchange for an honest review. I ended up listening to this book on audio, which was excellent. ( )

What a wonderful book! And this kind of praise doesn't come out of my keyboard often. I picked this novel as my vacation read due to its setting on St. Thomas island, but it has far surpassed my expectations. It made the already beautiful destination alive with local folklore and history.

When it comes to the Caribbean, what most people would associate with historical fiction set in those parts would probably be pirates, plantations and slavery. This book takes a fresher approach as this is a family saga about a Jewish family who came to the island that used to be a Danish colony at the time in search of a refuge. Their destinies are intertwined with the black people on the island while existing in apparently separate worlds.

I find it very interesting that the family in question is the one of Camille Pissarro, the father of impressionism. I wasn't aware he was from St.Thomas and the book describes in a wonderful way how a childhood on the island might have sparked a different kind of vision needed to create a new artistic movement.

The book is centred mostly around Rachel, the mother of Camille Pissarro and the first part of the book that describes her childhood and coming of age is the strongest, truly magical. The book is very sensual and haunting at times. I did find a slight disconnect between the character of Rachel as a young woman and later on, when she was more mature, esp. as the later years were more rushed in the novel, but it didn't disturb me so much.

I cannot say enough about the writing in this book. There are great characters, an interesting story and a very vivid description of the setting. The magical realism in this book is extremely subtle, but magic permeates the whole book which makes it hard to put it down and impossible to forget.

10/10 from me. ( )

This book was a little slow to start but I loved the story and the writing. Magical. ( )

I thought it was a bit slow to start but loved it
Audio book, listened Jan 2024 ( )