Nelly Rosario's \Songs of the Water Saints"" is a character study, as readers follow three generations of Dominican women and see life through their eyes; but primarily this book is about Graciela, the woman with whom the story begins.
Born during the U.S. occupation in Santo Domingo, readers first meet Graciela on the brink of adolescence, as she is completing a sexual awakening of sorts.??
From the beginning, Graciela's defiance, impulsiveness, naivet?? and strength are evident simply in the way her thoughts flow and color the world around her. Rosario does a good job illustrating all the complexities of Graciela's being without ever actually describing them: It feels as though we are watching a person go through the day thinking out loud.??
Rosario also does a good job hinting at the fact that what are initially perceived as strengths will eventually lead to Graciela's demise. The reader will occasionally wonder, with an almost perverted sense of excitement, how she is going to screw up.??
Although Graciela's character is believable-the reader can always see and understand why she makes a particular decision or chooses a certain course of action-she is simply not at all likeable. There are just no points in the novel where it is possible to empathize with Graciela.??
One can see that the circumstances she must deal with on a daily basis, especially with her utter lack of any education whatsoever (most poignantly felt when she talks of a country she has heard about called ""Germanyfrance""), would most certainly lead to poor decisions and inappropriate actions.??
However, because Rosario fails to give the reader any real points to relate to Graciela on it is possible to divorce circumstance and personality so the reader never feels any sympathy for her, even when sympathy should be felt.??
So the real question then becomes, is the reader supposed to feel compassion on any level for Graciela? Through her increasingly worsening sexual encounters, through abandoning her child and then returning only to leave again, through two failed marriages, is the reader supposed to want her life to turn out right'
The problem with this book is that to invest so much in Graciela requires the reader to have some sort of stake in her, and without?? empathy for her it is simply a waste of time. The reader just does not care about her to the extent they must in order to enjoy the book to its fullest.??
The main characters, not just Graciela, but Leila and Mercedes as well, do not merit much sympathy either because by the time the reader is introduced to them they have become mere extensions of Graciela. While they do not make the enormous mistakes she did, there is a feeling that if they were just given the chance they would in a heartbeat. What the reader is left with is a situation in which the character that this book is about are the ones we feel least for, while the peripheral characters, such as Casimiro and Andres are the ones we can actually sympathize with. It is hard to invest so much time in the lives of people we feel nothing for, whose mistakes seem to be so much their fault, so preventable that their consequences seem deserved, no matter how harsh. The rule generally seems to be that these types of characters should be relegated to the sidelines of the story, to bring out the good or the flaws in the more important characters.??While ""Songs of the Water Saints"" is certainly interesting and worth reading, (Rosario is an excellent writer and her knowledge of the culture she writes about positively accents every page of the book) the lack of true feeling the reader will have for Graciela and the others the book is built upon sours the experience as a whole.
""Song of the Water Saints"" is published by Vintage Books.
