Frangipani by Célestine Hitiura Vaite

[zeborah]

I visited Tahiti on a language exchange when I was 14 and stayed with a Tahitian family near Papeete for six weeks so when I saw this book I snapped it up. It brings back memories I'd forgotten and fleshes them out with a depth I was too young and too much an outsider to see at the time.

Frangipani is the second of three books about Matarena Mahi, and follows her from the conception of her second child, her daughter Leilani, through to when Leilani has grown up and decided what she wants to do with her life. The major thread of the story is about this loving but sometimes rocky mother-daughter relationship, but this is paralleled in the mother-daughter relationships among Matarena's relatives, and woven in with subplots of her children's (and others') romances, and of finding one's purpose in life.

It forms a rich tapestry of her extended family and community, especially of women's places in that community and women's strengths, and is told in an ever-optimistic voice and supremely readable style.

(See Célestine Hitiura Vaite's website)

Comments

[littlebutfierce]

Oh! I have this out from the library & it's on my stack of things waiting to be read. I'm glad it's a good read. Though I didn't know it was a second novel--I'm guessing maybe the first one is not in print or available in the UK anymore so they rejigged the cover blurb to disguise that it's a second book (I've seen that done to books before). Good to know it stands alone okay.