The Sunday tertulia - ISBNLookup.com

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For readers who loved Amy Tan's Joy Luck Club, and Whitney Otto's How to Make An American Quilt, this charming first novel is the Latina woman's answer to their call. In seven disparate voices, The Sunday Tertulia celebrates women's sensuality, individual spirituality, and hard-won wisdom in Sunday afternoon "tertulias"-or chats-filled with food, fun, and caring.

Claire, a young woman whose life in New York appears to be stalled, finds herself swept up by a group of older Latina women one afternoon as they find her sitting alone on a bench in the botanical garden, contemplating life. They invite her to join their monthly tertulias, and soon she finds herself spinning out the story of her life, receiving advice in return, and hearing the very different stories of each of these intelligent, strong-willed women who slowly become her friends. No subject is off-limits to these fiery gals: from infidelity to work, and from health to food to motherhood and more, each of these women has an opinion, and none are afraid to express it, despite the often contradictory nature of their views.

A retired Puerto Rican pharmacist, a Mexican doctor, a Peruvian chef, an Argentine literature professor, a Bolivian painter, and a Chilean landscape architect-readers will come to know each of these spirited women and to love them as does Claire.

Sizzling with song, anecdote, gossip and lore, and infused with Latin American history and tradition, Carlson takes the lid off the melting pot of Latina America and celebrates the mystery, lyricism and universal hopes and dreams of women everywhere.

Barnes & Noble Guide to New Fiction

This "easily read" "Latina Joy Luck Club" is the story of Claire, a young American whose vision of life changes after some older and wiser Latina friends bring her into their close-knit community in New York. Carlson may be "no Laura Esquivel," but one reviewer said, "Oprah should pick it!" Others thought the characters "weren't fully fleshed out," the phraseology "too hokey," and the "writing flat and uninspired."

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

A lonely young newcomer to New York is adopted by a remarkable circle of Latina women in Carlson's charming, wise and inspirational first novel. Visiting the Brooklyn Botanic Garden one afternoon, Claire meets retired pharmacist Isabela, a Cuban-born Puerto Rican. They strike up a friendship, and soon Claire is invited to Isabela's monthly tertulia, an informal gathering and exchange of ideas over a meal. As the youngest woman to attend the Sunday tertulia, and the only gringa, Claire finds herself the lucky recipient of seasoned advice based on life experience shared by such attendees as Aroma, a Mexican gynecologist; Sonia, an Argentine intellectual; Luna, a Peruvian chef; Pearl, a Bolivian-American painter; and Winifred, a Chilean landscape architect. The well-connected Isabela helps Claire find an apartment and a job as a paralegal in a midtown international law firm, where Claire's facility with languages is welcomed, but she is overworked and underpaid. Thanks to the monthly tertulia, however, and to its members' sophisticated girl talk on such diverse subjects as romance, infidelity, health, travel, money, poetry and even Latin superstitions, Claire eventually finds her own direction, and the strength and courage to pursue it. Actual poetry, recipes and herbal remedies are incorporated into the text, and though initially it's difficult to differentiate between the various speakers, the reader is soon able to sort them out. The novel's unusual structure--the tertulia members' dialogue, rather than being integrated into the exposition, is printed in blocks prefaced by each speaker's name--works well, and despite flashes of precious prose and dated feminist rhetoric, this earthly yet spiritual work satisfies. Agent, Jennifer Lyons. 4-city author tour. (June) FYI: Carlson, who is currently a consultant on Latin American fiction for W.W. Norton, edited an anthology on international fiction and is the author of seven YA books. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Kirkus Reviews

An informal gathering (tertulia) once a month brings together a group of women friends who share a meal and conversation. Lots and lots of conversation, it would seem. Children's author Carlson loves all things Latin, as she lets the reader know repeatedly: her stated intent in her first adult novel is to give North American readers an appreciation of the various Latin American cultures she knows so well. Each of the female characters here, except the young paralegal narrator whom the others adopt into their group like a lost Anglo puppy, is from a different Latin culture—Cuban, Argentinean, Mexican, etc.—but Carlson writes with such broad and overly flattering brushstrokes that she obliterates any sense of nuanced differences among them. All the women are good: lovely, wise, kind, often long-suffering to boot. Well-heeled professionals of a certain age, they sound remarkably alike despite the distinguishing characteristic each wears as a label: Aroma, the doctor, is interested in health; Luna, the chef, is religious; Pearl is artistic—all of them dangerously close to the very stereotypes Carlson deplores. Each chapter is set at a tertulia during which characters, after being formally identified, take turns holding forth, while the Anglo narrator, whose tone veers between whiny and adoring, adds her own opinions and the occasional piece of linking material in bold type. We get to hear advice, personal anecdote, recipes, and poem translations, all along with quasi-feminist philosophy. What story there is revolves around Luna, whose adulterous husband has impregnated his mistress. The one genuine moment of drama here occurs when Luna explains why she'sdecided not todivorce him. But this beginning of something substantial, unfortunately, is too little and too late. Sleep inducing, overall, like windy speechifying after a heavy meal.