Not brief enough, and despite the many lives involved, it seemed like there was no purpose to it.
Summary:
As a ghost, Blanca has lived at the Spanish monastery for centuries, watching inhabitants come and go and playing tricks on the less savory men that cross her path. It's a lonely life until a family of foreigners take up residence. The mother is unlike anyone Blanca has seen, writing, smoking, dressing like a man, and going by the name George. Accompanied by her equally untraditional children and her ailing pianist lover, Chopin, George anticipates an adventure on the sunnier coast. But not everything goes according to plan, and Blanca fears she might not be able to protect them from the winter and angry villagers sure to come.
Verdict: 1.5/10
I almost gave this one a 2, but at least the other books I've ranked 2 were short. This one just dragged on and on.
I do respect that Stevens presented a new take on ghosts. Blanca doesn't automatically know the ins and outs of her afterlife. She doesn’t know how she appears to others or if she would even be able to identify another ghost if there are any others. Blanca has to learn everything for herself just like the reader. And one thing we learn is she can see people's pasts as well as their futures.
However, almost the entire story was backstory. At least half of the content is peering into the memories of various characters, which gets confusing to keep track of character to focus on and where in the timeline a particular chapter falls. I expected this with Blanca as a ghost since we need to find out how she died and her history. But do we really have to go through each character's life in past tense? There's very little present action, and even the future action we see is limited and depressing.
Another confusing element was the languages. In this novel, ghosts understand all languages but can't identify which are being spoken. So the reader doesn’t know what language is being spoken or which of the characters can understand it.
And this book suffered from one of the most recurring problems in feminist literature: marriage is always a curse. No romance can ever be happy or at least can't stay that way. Wives are always mistreated and thrust into a role of servitude, instead of an equal alliance. I get that women have and continue to be oppressed, but really, there's no good couples in the entire country throughout centuries? Even in the darker periods of history, there still had to be some decent marriages.
I understand that Blanca's past makes her prejudiced against men, and from her experience, that's a fair stance to have. Her story sadly isn't an uncommon one as many women throughout history and even today have gotten pregnant and been abandoned. But her gender bias is still extreme at times, especially given how she over-sexualizes women constantly.
Blanca hyper focuses on her attraction to women, a fact that she herself even points out as hypocrytical. Blanca and the reader both have to wonder why she punishes men when they oogle women but then spies on those women that she desires in the same way.
Also if this is meant to be historical fiction (with Blanca's life in the 1470s and the family arriving in 1838), then I'm sorry but it's unrealistic to have nearly all of your characters be LGBTQ+. Literally all of the monks Blanca mentions were gay. Both George and Chopin have had lovers of other genders, somewhat openly (which would not have happened in that culture back then).
It felt like the author couldn't introduce a character without primarily talking about their sexual preference. A character should have a personality first and not just be boiled down to their orientation. George was a little more well-rounded in this way, but Blanca was so hung up on sex for the entire book. There wasn't one chapter where sex wasn't mentioned!
Altogether, overly sexualizing every character took away from the plot focus... And there really wasn't much of a plot. Chopin is sick and the small-minded villagers want to drive them out of town - that's not really a new storyline. And while a protective ghost could have added something to this, Blanca was mainly a specating spectre.
(SPOILER ALERT) After 200 pages, the family finally decides their vacation was a bad idea and that they should probably leave. Seriously, why did they go there in the first place?! From the outset, Blanca and the others regard George's choice of location as an odd decision. But we never find out why she picked it. Granted, Stevens could be demonstrating a negative side to George’s impulsiveness. Being spontaneous can be fun and enticing, but it can present challenges like inconsistency and ill-planning. As the leader of her family, it appears George put them in a bad situation through her rash decision-making. It's an interesting complexity to explore, but again it was largely overshadowed by Blanca's sexual fantasies about her. (SPOILERS OVER)
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