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    The Seamstress: A Novel
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    The Seamstress: A Novel
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    The Seamstress: A Novel
    Ebook885 pages14 hours

    The Seamstress: A Novel

    By Frances De Pontes Peebles

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    As seamstresses, the young sisters Emília and Luzia dos Santos know how to cut, how to mend, and how to conceal. These are useful skills in the lawless backcountry of Brazil, where ruthless land barons called "colonels" feud with bands of outlaw cangaceiros, trapping innocent residents in the cross fire.

    Emília, whose knowledge of the world comes from fashion magazines and romance novels, dreams of falling in love with a gentleman and escaping to a big city.

    Luzia also longs to escape their little town, where residents view her with suspicion and pity. Scarred by a childhood accident that left her with a deformed arm, the quick-tempered Luzia finds her escape in sewing and in secret prayers to the saints she believes once saved her life.

    But when Luzia is abducted by a group of cangaceiros led by the infamous Hawk, the sisters' quiet lives diverge in ways they never imagined. Emília stumbles into marriage with Degas Coelho, the son of a doctor whose wealth is rivaled only by his political power.

    She moves to the sprawling seaside city of Recife, where the glamour of her new life is soon overshadowed by heartache and loneliness. Luzia, forced to trek through scrubland and endure a nomadic existence, proves her determination to survive and begins to see the cangaceiros as comrades, not criminals.

    In Recife, Emília must hide any connection to her increasingly notorious sister. As she learns to navigate the treacherous waters of Brazilian high society, Emília sees the country split apart after a bitter presidential election. Political feuds extend to the countryside, where Luzia and the Hawk are forced to make unexpected alliances and endure betrayals that threaten to break the cangaceiros apart. But Luzia will overcome time and distance to entrust her sister with a great secret—one Emília vows to keep. And when Luzia's life is threatened, Emília will risk everything to save her.

    An enthralling novel of love and courage, loyalty and adventure, that brings to life a faraway time and place, The Seamstress is impeccably drawn, rich in depth and vision, and heralds the arrival of a supremely talented new writer.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateOct 13, 2009
    ISBN9780061842825
    Unavailable
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    Reviews for The Seamstress

    4/5

    104 ratings18 reviews

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    • 5/5
      I was amazed by the richness of this book. Engrossing, lush and beautifully written. A real treat.
    • 5/5
      I love, love this kind of lusciously written historical fiction. This is an exquisitely detailed story about love, loyalty, and sisterhood set in Brazil during a very turbulent time. The story is told in alternating chapters from the two sisters', Emília and Luzia, point of view. Their lives take very different turns but deep down they stay intertwined and I loved it. I also loved the role sewing played in this story. They were both seamstresses by profession but it had very different meaning for them both. 
      As much as I love multiple storylines in books, it's unfortunate if all the storylines are not equally interesting and, sadly, most of this book I was much more invested in Luzia's story than Emília's. Whenever I was in Emília's chapter, I kept checking how many pages I had left until Luzia's chapter. Luckily, about halfway through the book I finally started to connect with Emília's story and now that I'm finished with it, I can definitely appreciate what the author did with the story as a whole. However, I'd probably would like to rate this 4.5 stars just because it took me so long to get interested in Emília's side of the story. Still this was nothing short of sublime.

      I'll definitely want to keep my eye on this author's work in the future.
    • 4/5
      This book has everything I love: a history lesson, strong characters, and a great story!
    • 5/5
      Frances de Pontes Peebles created a rich and lively atmosphere in "The Seamstress". This tale has a great sense of place and while reading it I felt like I really was carried away to a long past period in Brazil. I could see, feel, and smell everything as if it were right in front of me. The subject of cangaceiros was fascinating as I'd never heard of them before. Apparently "The Seamstres" is one of many adaptations of the story of the real-life cangaceiros Lampiao and Maria Bonita. The contrasting realities of the two sisters are brilliantly told. I cried at the end, of course. I hope to see more from this author.
    • 5/5
      This book was a surprise to me. It's a large book with a pretty, but generic cover. I knew it was worthy and historical and set somewhere in South America; all of which were fine things, but not things that called me to read it. So the amount of enjoyment I got from this book, the sheer fun I had reading it, was unexpected. I didn't know beforehand that Frances de Pontes Peebles had written a rip-roaring adventure story that ran the gamut from hardscrabble survival in the Brazilian hinterlands to coastal high society to political turmoil to life in an outlaw gang, evading the law and enacting vengeance, all set during the last few years of the 1920s to the first few years of the 1930s. The Seamstress follows two very different sisters, being raised by their aunt, who teaches them a trade and manners. Emilia longs for a more elegant life, the one depicted in the magazines handed down to her by her employer. She refuses to look at the stolid farmer's sons who would court her, setting her sights on the refined sewing teacher from the capitol. Luiza, tall and with an arm crippled in a fall from a mango tree, has no use for the things Emilia loves. She likes her life in her aunt's house, although she is prickly and rebellious. Circumstances sent one sister to live in luxury in Recife, the provincial capital, while the other joins a band of bandits, led by The Hawk, a feared but canny outlaw. Brazil is changing rapidly, and those changes challenge each woman. Both Luiza and Emilia are complex, interesting and believable characters. They are both strong women, although their strengths fall in different areas. The book begins slowly, but it wasn't long before I was hauling it around with me to read a few more pages whenever I could. Generally, I only travel with an ereader or a light paperback, but I was willing to lug The Seamstress around with me until, all too quickly, it came to an end.
    • 5/5
      This book reminds me of all that is good about fine literature. It transports you to a new time and place. It interests you and leaves you satisfied yet wistful. Cheers, Frances De Pontes Peebles!
    • 4/5
      So I read an ARC, and I have to tell you, August may be too long to wait. This book was really, really wonderful. It's one of the ones I just can't get enough of, where there are two narratives, two different perspectives. In my opinion, sloppiness is often directly proportional to the length of the book, but even though this book is very much on the long side, nothing is lost or even diluted. I do love a well-crafted novel, and I highly recommend this one.
    • 5/5
      Great story about two sisters with two very different lives after they are seperated as children. Story takes place in the 1920s, in Brezil. One goes to the city, gets married and the other one lives a life as a bandit. Both women have regrets about their choices. Loved the ending, can't explain why because I will give it away... I will recommend it to the book club... The only thing, you need to be patient as the book contains 640 pages...
    • 5/5
      Set in Brazil in the 1920's and 1930's, The Seamstress is about two sisters who each long to escape from their small, backcountry village. As they each find what seems to be their means of escape, their lives diverge, yet they retain strong, though obscure ties.Emilia marries into the family of a wealthy, highly respected doctor and moves to a coastal city.Luzia, or Victrola, as she is called, chooses to align herself with the cangaceiros, a viscious gang of bandits who roam the interior, and with their magnetic leader, The Hawk,While Emilia struggles to fit into her new family, and the upper echelons of society, Luzia is transformed into The Seamstress, the most notorious bandit of them all.I loved this book for so many reasons! The characters were phenomenal, the historical detail was wonderfully rich, the separate plots were enthralling, and harmonized beautiful.I think that this book would make a terrific selection for book clubs; it embodies so many interesting topics for discussion.
    • 5/5
      Beautifully written story of two orphaned sisters who were raised by their aunt in a poor village in Brazil. After the aunt who raised them dies, one of the sisters makes a choice that she thinks is her only way out of the situation she would find herself in if her sister marries, which is very likely. From there on this could be two books instead of one but is bound together beautifully by the very talented author. They go on with their diverse lives not knowing what happened to the other one. Then Emilia, the elder of the two who has married and moved to a metropolitan area, sees something in a newspaper that she sneaks to read when she can. She is a daughter-in-law in an upper class home where women are not to be involved in anything but keeping the house and providing male heirs. Luzia, the younger sister, is described in the paper but not identified by name. She is connected with a band of rebels and Emilia isn't sure if she is a captive or is there of her own accord. Their two stories are so artfully handled in this dramatic book I couldn't wait to jump from one chapter to the next. Their stories are separate but magically interwoven and intriguing. This book is based in fact and, although it is fiction, gives us a good look at what happens to all levels of citizens in a country where changes are inevitable but choices are hard.
    • 5/5
      Summary: Emilia and Luzia dos Santos, sisters of humble origins, find their own ways to escape the drudgery of poor village life. Emilia marries well and moves to Recife to enjoy high society, Luzia is abducted by a gang of country bandits. Both sisters discover their capabilities and limitations in surroundings far from their shared past.I enjoyed this enormously - the setting is very thoroughly evoked and does well to distract you from the rainy, grey London setting. It passed the "would rather be sleep-deprived than put this down" test with a score of about 200 pages! (before I finally had to turn the light out...)The author does well to keep the perspectives of two sisters so separate; Luzia is set up as a villain but then is sympathetic, Emilia was a snob but her desire for fine cloth is tempered when she is disappointed in marriage. The connection between them is never really broken, they find ways to communicate through the newspapers, and they each come to appreciate the other's gifts in later life.The Brazilian hinterlands are beautifully described - having a troupe of country bandits enables the author to compose odes to the untouched nature: "After the rains, the caatinga bloomed. Orange flowers, their petals as thin and dry as paper, emerged from the quipa's prinkly rounds. The malva bushes grew as tall as men. Bromeliads released red blooms. Bees swarmed the scrub. When Luzia closed her eyes, their buzzine reminded her of rushing water."She peppers the novel with untranslated Portuguese/Brazilian, explaining some and not some other, and on the whole, she gets it right. I had a few moments of "I wonder what that means", but mostly I just carried on - and the heavy flavouring just reinforces the exotic setting. Both sisters are disappointed in their choice of life, but they both make the best of it and are well-respected in their chosen societies. The glamour and social rituals of Emilia's life in the city were beautiful to read; the idea of Old and New families who don't converse; areas of town once Old, now infiltrated by the New; and Emilia's involvement in the suffragette movement and in bringing new fashion to Recife.Well worth the very heavy 646 pages!
    • 5/5
       I will be honest... mid-way I got bored with it and stumbled through parts of the portuguese words and descriptions. Yes, they were rich with descriptive language (but the middle of the book got boring...) and more boring... DON"T GIVE UP on this story though, it has a point and Peebles gets there slowly but surely.
    • 5/5
      1920's Brazil - remote mountainous region: Two sisters, Emília and Luzia dos Santos, parent-less, have just moved in to live with their seamstress aunt. The aunt teaches them the ways of the trade. Emilia and Luzia are as different as day and night. Beautiful Emília dreams of leaving the small provincial town, reads the fashion/beauty magazine, and designs her own clothing (often to the ridicule of the town's residents. Tall, independent Luzia, with a damaged arm from a childhood accident, has never let it stop her from becoming a confident seamstress. She too has dreams even though she knows her damaged arm prevents her from becoming a viable marriageable interest.The two sister's paths separate though when a group of cangaceiros (bandits), led by the infamous Hawk, converge on the town and take Luzia with them. Emília finds her escape through a hasty marriage to a wealthy doctor's son and moves to the city of Recife. Luzia becomes a well-known cangaceiro nicknamed The Seamstress and Emília becomes a wealthy socialite. However, girlhood dreams are never the same in reality. Emília has to hid her past and association with Luzia and must deal with high society prejudices and a distant husband with a secret. Luzia finds that every day life as a cangaceiro is not as thrilling as one might think. Communication between the sisters is non-existent and the two rely on clipping newspaper stories to keep in touch.The novel alternates between each sister's viewpoint. At the beginning I loved Luzia's voice and was always impatient to get through Emília's side to get back to Luzia. I just related more to Luzia over Emília's fashionable frippery. But as the story progressed, I fell for Emília's plight and just loved how she evolved. I have to say it did remind me of Isabel Allende but Frances de Pontes Peebles has a voice all her own. It is just vivid and beautiful. Be aware that while the Hawk's group of cangaceiro's often seem like Brazil's Robin Hood or Zorro...there are gruesome atrocities committed as well.I LOVED this book. I couldn't put it down. I loved Luzia. I love the scenes between Luzia and the Hawk. And Emília evolution from a selfish materialistic girl into the woman in Recife is just beautiful and often heart wrenching to read. Frances de Pontes Peebles depicted the Brazilian landscape and scenes so well that I almost felt like I was watching it. I can still picture in my mind the newspaper clipping and photo depicting the elusive Hawk and Seamstress' band of cangaceiros. The history of the Brazilian land and people is fascinating and I loved finding a book that depicted this unfamiliar time period.I also stumbled across Frances de Pontes Peebles blog The Art of Waiting and I am addicted. You should check it out. There's an section at the end of the paperback copy that I have which has an interview with Frances regarding her research and travels while writing The Seamstress. She actually went into the remote regions and talked with people in the very places she was writing about. No wonder the imagery is so vivid! And Frances' own ancestral history also takes a part in this story. I want her to write a whole other book/memoir depicting her adventures in writing and researching this book.
    • 3/5
      The parallel stories of two orphaned sisters, brought up by their aunt in the Brazilian countryside in the 1920s, and trained as seamstresses. Emilia dreams of falling in love and escaping to the glamorous city, while Luzia – left with a deformed arm, after a childhood accident – has a more pessimistic attitude towards her own future.Their paths diverge when Luzia is abducted by bandits, and Emilia meets a man who offers to marry her, and take her away to the city. Neither necessarily has the life that they had imagined for themselves. Now living very different lives, the sisters nevertheless continue to draw upon the lessons and metaphors of sewing as they describe the way in which their lives continue to develop. I liked the little cultural details, the depiction of the relationship between the two sisters, and the way in which their shared upbringing influenced their subsequent lives. When the market in the US crashes, the drought worsens, and the country falls in civil war, the bandits seemed to become more and more vicious. The story started dragging for me at this point, and I lost some of the earlier enthusiasm I had had for it.
    • 4/5
      Emilia and Luzia are two young sisters being raised by their Aunt Sofia, in the backcountry of Brazil, since both of their parents have passed away. Their aunt has taught them to sew and they both sew beautifully.Emilia is the older sister and she has romantic longings. She dreams of falling in love and enjoying society in the big city with her husband.The younger sister, Luzia, dreams of escape too. As a young girl, Luzia falls from a mango tree and when her arm doesn’t heal right, she is dubbed “Victrola” by everyone in town, even the priest. She longs to get away from the constant teasing.Their lives change forever when bandits invade their town and take Luzia with them upon their escape. Aunt Sofia dies shortly thereafter and Emilia submits to a loveless marriage since it wouldn’t look right for her to live on her own.The sisters live very different lives – one as a bandit and one as a member of a wealthy, well-respected family in the city – yet their lives and their love for each other remain forever entwined.The Seamstress by Frances de Pontes Peebles started a little slow for me, but I think that was more a reflection of some things that were going on in my life, rather than of the book itself, because once I got into the book, I didn’t want to put it down. The story is told from the point of view of Luzia and Emilia in alternating chapters, and the author did a wonderful job of showing how the same event affected each sister. The sisters are very different and yet so similar and I could relate to them both. The character development and storyline in this book are fantastic! This book is set in the late 1920’s to mid 1930’s and it is historical fiction at its best! It is obviously very well researched and I found the historical details to be fascinating. The Seamstress is the author’s first novel and I sincerely hope she is busy working on another one.
    • 3/5
      The Seamstress is a good read, and truly an epic in every sense. The book is set in North Eastern Brazil, spanning from 1928 to 1935. The novel tells the story of the Dos Santos sisters, Emilia and Luzia; young women who have been raised in an isolated village located in the interior. The sisters are both talented seamstresses, having been trained by their Aunt since childhood, but they possess very different temperaments. Emilia is beautiful and desires above all else to escape to one of the cities, such as Sao Paulo, that she has read about in her Fon Fon fashion magazines. She dreams of being a great lady living in a mansion, far from the dirt floors of her youth. Luzia, whose deformity in the form of a permanently bent arm as the result of a childhood accident, is referred to as Victrola by the village children and adults alike. Her disability has already limited many of the dreams and ambitions that she might have held for her future; perhaps her greatest wish is to escape from the village where that very disability defines everything about her. Of course both sisters do ultimately leave their small village, but not in the way they anticipate. Luzia is taken by a band of outlaws led by the mysterious Hawk, while Emilia marries a man she hardly knows, the wealthy son of a doctor in Recife. Their two lives become increasingly polarized by their very different experiences. Neither finds themselves able to reveal the existence of the other, but always they hold the knowledge of the other close to their hearts. It was clear that this book was a labor of love. The novel was clearly well-researched, and each phrase seemed carefully and lovingly crafted. I did enjoy the story and the characters. At times, I did find the story dragging a bit, but it quickly picked up. I also found the bond between the sisters to be fascinating. Perhaps this is because I don't have a sister of my own. The character of the Hawk was especially intriguing. He was so enigmatic. I loved that I could never guess what he was going to do next. I do have to admit that I found Luzia's story to be the more interesting, and that I found myself hurrying a bit more over the chapters dealing with Emilia's experiences. Overall, I enjoyed the book, even if it didn't quite live up to my expectations.
    • 4/5
      Excellent story of divergent lives of 2 sisters in 1930's Brazil. One became an outlaw while the other one married into life of ease. Both brought up by aunt and taught to become seamstresses. Interesting look at Brazil's social mores and political forces during this time frame.
    • 3/5
      I am an avid reader of literary fiction and typically devour good books as soon as I get my hands on one, but I have to admit that I struggled to finish The Seamstress, by Frances De Pontes Peebles. I was hoping for a transcendent historical epic with a feminist twist—a book that would make a long-gone era in a far-away exotic land come alive through the courageous lives of strong and intelligent women. I wanted to be pulled into the vortex of a story so complex and fascinating that I could not pull myself away. Unfortunately, most of the time I was reading this novel I felt trapped, like being alone with an elderly loved one who can't stop regaling me with detailed stories about times long gone. Yes, I enjoyed the complex historical story, the abundant detailed information about the historical period, and the book's literary themes—it was the telling that could have, and should have, been better. For me, this book bogged down with too much detail and not enough good literary merit to sustain my interest.The total experience was not all negative. In the end, I did enjoy the book and found a great deal that was positive about the story and the writing. Frances De Pontes Peebles is a good writer—her prose is rich, fresh, and fluid. Her writing is best at evoking mood and image. It was the unimaginative structure and tedious pace of the story that kept me putting the book down and going off to do other things. Unfortunately, there was no time at which the story swept me off balance and made me want to abandon everything else I had to do in my life to give it more time. As I read other reviews, it is obvious that many readers reacted far more positively, so I have to question myself and ask: what separates those readers from me? Why did I find this book such a quagmire while others found it so utterly enthralling? To answer that, I'll have to share with you what I want out of a good book. For me, when it comes to good literature, a good story is not all that important. Obviously, that sets me far apart from most readers. Typically readers are mostly looking for a great story. But a good story is not what I look for in great fiction. What I seek most in good literature is: 1) unique believable characters that pop off the page and live in my mind for a long time, 2) prose that is at times so arresting and beautiful that I see reality in a whole new light, and 3) themes that give me a deeper insight into the human condition. So what was this book? It was mostly a good epic story about two sisters who made very different choices in their lives—sisters who lived during a turbulent period in Brazil's pre-World War II history. I believed in these characters and enjoyed sharing their lives, but ultimately, I am sure that I will forget them and the details of their lives in a very short time. What may live on longer is the rich description of the historical period that they lived through. If you love historical epics centering on the lives of women, then you will probably enjoy this novel. If story is not so important to you, but outstanding unforgettable literary characters, breath-taking prose, and rich thematic texture are paramount then I recommend that you consider selecting another book.