Detailed plot synopsis reviews of The Marriage of Opposites |
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Camille lived like a bum in Venezuela but even he eventually annoyed Melbye who told him to get the f away from him and Camille eventually returned to St. Thomas.
Rachel looked at the paintings Camille made and claimed one and hung it up, showing she is finally coming to terms with the fact that her son is a (probably homosexual) artist.
Camille decides to marry a black maid named Julie. It turns out he is not homosexual after all. Rachel is not pleased he is marrying Julie, who is kind of a retard.
Frederic, Rachel's latest husband, gets sick and Rachel sees black birds. She knows black birds means death and sure enough Frederic dies. If only Rachel had gotten some white birds she might have saved him, heh heh. They were in France and there was no Magic Herb Man, but the regular doctor gave Frederic some tea.
Click here to see the rest of this reviewGuess what? The tea didn't cure him. In fact, it was some kind of cocaine. He died being a coke addict.
Then the book just kind of ends. Without an ending.
The end.
Literary Criticism:
This book was so boring! It was really bad.
1) Not much happened. Most of the story, what little there was, focused on the Jews of St. Thomas not accepting Rachel's marriage to Frederic. Then they accepted it over time. Big deal! The subplots involving Jestine and Camille were equally dull.
2) Rachel was the protagonist but most of the story was not about her. Most of the story seemed to be about Rachel's family and friends, rather than a story focused on Rachel. We get little bits of story about different people giving the book a diffuse, confused feeling.
3) Black people didn't know they were black. Come on!
This could have been an interesting story. It could have been a story filled with sex, seduction, romance, and business competition. There was none of that. There was a brief romance between Rachel and Frederick but that was it. Frederick and Isaac were both two dimensional characters, there was little of the relationship between Rachel and them, except when they were dying. The book is entitled "The Marriage of Opposites" but we never find out much about the men Rachel is married to.
Rachel had about 150 kids but we never learned much about any of them except Camille. If there had been a love triangle involving Rachel, or Rachel's kids fighting each other for the control of the family business, that would have been interesting. But instead this book was a vague "life of a Jewish generation in St. Thomas", and felt more like a chronology than a compelling story.
