SOURCE: “Family History,” in New York Times Book Review, February 22, 1998, p. 16.

In the following review, Childress offers qualified praise for Eccentric Neighborhoods, admiring the tone and style of the novel but faulting the characterization and the quantity of individual story lines.

In recent years, the outpouring of Latin American fiction has come to seem a bit stale, a long-running show in which the literary heirs of Gabriel García Márquez (and even the master himself) must strain ever harder to dazzle us with magic-realist tricks. The most refreshing thing about Rosario Ferré, one of Puerto Rico's most influential writers, is that she keeps her feet firmly planted on the ground. No cows are seen to fly. No passionate lovers burst into flame. The magic in Ferré's fiction arises from the intertwined experiences of human beings, carrying the story of 20th-century Puerto Rico in the arc of...