Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Danticat, Edwidge (Vol. 136) - Matthew Rothschild (review date December 1998)

1. Printable Version
2. Download PDF
3. Cite this Page
4. Tweet This

Matthew Rothschild (review date December 1998)

SOURCE: A review of The Farming of Bones, in Progressive, December, 1998, p. 44.

[In the following review, Rothschild offers a positive assessment of The Farming of Bones.]

This year, I failed to conserve much time for the rambles of fiction and poetry. But one novel I highly recommend is Edwidge Danticat's The Farming of Bones (Soho Press, 1998). Set in the Dominican Republic in 1937 during the regime of General Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, the book is told through the voice of Amabelle, a Haitian servant who falls in love with a Haitian sugarcane worker on the plantation.

Danticat's writing is lush. “I can smell his sweat, which is as thick as sugarcane juice when he's worked too much,” Amabelle narrates. “I can still feel his lips, the eggplant-violet gums that taste of greasy goat milk boiled to candied sweetness with mustard-colored potatoes.”

This is a...

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass

1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Edwidge Danticat with Margaria Fichtner (interview date 1 May 1995)
   2. Edwidge Danticat with Renee H. Shea (interview date 17 January 1996)
   3. Myriam J. A. Chancy (essay date 1997)
   4. Publishers Weekly (review date 8 June 1998)
   5. Michael Upchurch (review date 27 September 1998)
   6. Zia Jaffrey (review date 16 November 1998)
   7. Matthew Rothschild (review date December 1998)
   8. Jacqueline Brice-Finch (review date Spring 1999)
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. Edwidge Danticat