“Oranges can be sweet or sour,” I answered. “Like love.”
Country: Columbia
Title: Orange Wine
Author: Esperanza Hope Synder
Language: English
Translator: N/A
Publisher: Mareas Books 2025
Esperanza Hope Snyder’s Orange Wine was a bit of a disappointment. It opens with a bang – “While I was giving birth to Lucy, my husband, Alessandro, was lying in bed with my sister Isabel” – but it never really delivered. Ines is supposed to be partaking on a journey of “artistic freedom and feminine awakening,” but she never seems fully developed enough for her journey to strike a chord. Despite all the pieces being there, they seemed a bit disjointed, and I never felt like I really saw Ines.
The novel is set in early twentieth century Columbia. Ines is clearly the pretty daughter, the doted-on baby of the family. The Catholic Church is a main character here, dictating much of what happens in Ines’s life, but again, there is just a disconnect with how the story is told. Ines marries a scoundrel who can’t keep it in his pants, and his relationship with Ines’s sister began before they were even married. (I’d say the sisters are all awful here, but they’re painted with the same brush as Ines.) Ines ends up with the man one of her other sister’s had her eyes on, despite being still married. They begin a relationship.
There are some really good things here about the control over women by fathers, husbands, and the church, but the delivery just fall flat. What makes it even more unfortunate is that the novel was inspired by her grandparents.
Well. They can’t all be winners. (But I am counting this on Tommi Reads the World!)
A Girl Named Tommi 