Customer Reviews
LOVED THIS BOOK! 
2008-08-11
I read this book over 15 years ago and loved it. It just spoke to me, and apparently, to all my friends who borrowed it. It is beautifully written!
good for immigrants 
2008-04-24
this is a good book to experience what the immigrants went through regards to culture difference. The quality is not really good because the paper is cut in waves. I don't know if it supposed to be like that or not. But i am not used to turn over such book.
Too Slow 
2007-12-09
This book was one that I chose from a list for my Soc 101 class. Had I read the reviews that said that the book was slow and that the characters were disconnected, I would never had read the book. This book is very hard to analyze because it doesn't move anywhere, and is often confusing due to changing time, character, and language. Although I know that the book is obviously going to use Spanish, this was a bad example of how to use it.
How the Garcia Girls Lost Thier Accent 2007-10-24
This is a wonderful Book. The Story of the Four Garcia sisters is told by going back in time from how they came to live in the United States and adapt to this new country to little girls living in Dominican Republic and growing up there, and how they came about to moving to America. Julia Alvarez is an amazing author the book is not only funny, but you can always relate to some part of it. An essay book to read and a lot of fun for people of all age!
Does it get any better 2007-10-14
I am 1/3 of the way through this book and I am stalled -- I have read 2 other books since starting this work. It just isn't a rewarding experience for me. There is no driving beat in the book to drive me on.
a novel worthy of reading 2007-08-16
This book poignantly describes the challenges of trying to assimilate into a new culture while maintaining the old. Alvarez does an exceptional job capturing the difficulty of trying to fit in, while trying to follow the beliefs and culture of the old country.
This is definitely a book to consider, for it will reveal the complications of assimilation, the love for our family, and the bond of sisterhood. Overall, this is a novel that provides insight towards a new culture.
Poor little rich girls. .. . 
2007-08-15
I found this book to be well enough written but the story was so-o-o whiny. Somehow I had trouble empathizing with these poor little rich girls who have to move away from their fancy lives but soon enough spend summers back on the island, go to New England boarding schools and live well again, albeit with fewer servants.
The Girls Who Lived 2007-08-10
Ms. Alvarez writes about her two homelands, the Dominican Republic and the United States, with such believability that I kept checking to see if I was reading a memoir rather than a novel (it's the latter). Her most famous work, In the Time of the Butterflies, is her imagined account of the lives of historical people who gave their lives in resistance to General Trujillo's dictatorship in the Dominican in the first half of the 20th century. "Garcia Girls" covers some of the same period, but tells the story of girls who lived, eventually to emigrate to the U.S. to struggle in different ways.
The structure of the novel takes some getting used to as Alvarez writes from now to then--starting with vignettes about grown women and working her way back to stories about their early childhood in the Dominican. She also switches voices among the four sisters--each has a distinct personality and life, but their similarities had me checking back sometimes to remind myself exactly who was speaking.
Fans of Ms. Alvarez who haven't read this book should do so. Newcomers might better start with "Butterflies" and then try "Garcia Girls", given that the latter switches among both place and narrator ("Butterflies" does the latter as well), and works its way back in time. "Butterflies" also gives some historical perspective about life under Trujillo that is important to understand to appreciate the travels of the Garcia family. Both books are appropriate for teenagers as well as adults.
A Good Read 2007-05-29
I was assigned to read this book for my college class--the history of the women's movement. It was very good and funny. I laughed out loud in many places. I finished the book in two days which is good for me since I am a slow reader. It held my interest the entire time.
"Subtle...Powerful..."? 2007-05-26
I don't really know what to say...But I feel disappointed that I didn't find How The García Girls Lost Their Accents to be the work that is proclaimed in the editorial reviews.
There are without a doubt parts that display Alvarez's talent with words...I enjoyed the very first episode of Yolanda and her craving for guavas. Some of the vignettes centering on Yolanda, I think, are some of the best in the book. But even then, there was something missing, and it was that I didn't connect with any of the characters as real people.
The sisters, we are told, all have different personalities, but essentially the only things that differentiate them in the reader's mind are their names. Carla, we are reminded many times, is the analyst in the family, the psychologist, which we can see in her comments, but she doesn't have a real voice; she isn't a real person. Mami, Papi, the aunts and uncles and the whole García family didn't come to life for me. At times, some of them were on the verge of coming off of the paper, but they never really did. Everything that is good in the novel is hard to appreciate as it is dampened by the rest.
Alvarez's exploration of some ideas, such as the displacement that immigrants experience, are not really effective...Sometimes she states things that we never really get a sense of and understand because we cannot sympathize with the characters. I think it is ultimately because of this that some parts feel contrived or not quite artfully done. As a whole, it is like a skeleton of a book. The organization of the vignettes (backwards in time) is creative but unmeaningful, and the vignettes themselves don't intertwine successfully to give us a "bigger picture" or insight or any sense of connection; rather, they are isolated, and as the narrator changes from 3rd person to Yolanda, the narration sounds the same. It doesn't captivate.
Right now I am more than halfway through the book, and I don't feel that it is worth finishing. I should pick up another of Julia Alvarez's but definitely do not feel motivated to at the moment...
For an American immigration story, The Joy Luck Club and The Namesake are two great novels!
