Overall, what do you think of "Of Women and Salt"?

Overall, what do you think of "Of Women and Salt"?

I really enjoyed this book! I liked traveling through time learning about cigar making, revolutions, immigration, and deportation. I fell in love with each character and saw how in each woman, the previous generations still lived within them. I felt like the ending came together beautifully.

I was at first gripped by the book but my interest waned as I continued reading. I was interested in Maria Isabel, Dolores and Carmen, but did not find Jeanette as compelling. There was much more I wanted to know about the other characters and I was left disappointed and felt the book left too many tantalizing threads not pulled. The book was full of strong women and I enjoyed that, I just wish Garcia had given them room to tell me more.

Maria Isabel was a compelling character that perhaps deserved her own book. I felt her story was too far removed in time to work well with the more contemporary stories. I also felt that the organization of the book would have made the women’s stories stronger had it not skipped back and forth thro time. It is a good first book, just not great.

I had a little bit of trouble following the lack of chronology but I really liked the book and would recommend it. I could see any of the women having their own books.

I enjoyed the book and the strength the characters found to overcome difficult circumstances. I valued the choices that the characters made to help others even when they were having difficulties.

I did not care for the story or the way it was written.

I can't day this was one of my favorite books. I liked learning about the cultures, and the women's stories. However, I didn't like the way it skipped around. I would have liked more focus on on one family. I did like the way it ended though.

I was really interested in starting this book. The beginning chapter drew me into the story, yet, the back and forth between time periods and characters afterward left me just turning pages to finish. I never really learned enough information about each family member to see how they related to each other or how they became the person each had grown up to be. The story just felt disjointed.

I agree with several of you so far that the book is disjointed and hard to follow too often. I really would like to have learned more about Maria Isabel and her life and times. However, her story was too far removed in time from the others in this book. Drug addiction stories are so prevalent now and there didn't seem to be much new here, the same with immigration. Immigration has become such a difficult and complicated issue in our world but this story did not help me understand it better, or feel that we are on our way to remedying its consequences.

Overall I liked the book and I'm glad I read it. I have to say it bounced around a little too much for me - I'd be interested in each of these women and their stories. It was almost like the author was trying to put too much into one book. The ending gave me hope, but my cynical side says what are the chances that would happen? I'm glad that immigration is being written about more and more so we understand the sacrifices so many immigrants make just to come here.

Not my favorite writing style. Trying to follow the story was exhausting with some chapters taking several pages to figure out what was going on, when, etc. In hoping to understand the immigrant plight, there was extreme disappointment with this book.

Women of Salt was beautifully written, and the characters were believable and engaging. I appreciated how the author connected the familial traumas from one generation into the next. The contrast between the US treatment of immigrants based on their country of origin was vividly depicted.

I really enjoyed it overall. I liked that it was a multi-generational immigration novel about women that was messy and a little weird in both structure and subject matter. That's still not the expected route for such stories to take, and it's an approach that upends popular narratives suggesting that immigrants and marginalized people need to be perfectly sympathetic or exotic objects in order to be seen as human or worthy of attention. It's not a book that particularly asks for the reader's sympathy — just as the characters don't ask before taking actions that may be morally questionable yet also make sense given their realities of their lives — but it engages on a deep level and offers a close-up and interesting view of several flawed, willful women.

It's no surprise that there was a family tree chart at the beginning of the book. It was needed time and again to figure out what was going on. The author would have been well advised to spend more time with each character so readers could connect with them and not need a family tree. The book was only 204 pages so there certainly was reasonable room to expand and do so. Also, non-linear timelines seem to be a thing currently, and it's becoming annoying since it doesn't enhance most books. I didn't enjoy this book as much as I had hoped.

This is a novel that requires a second glance. As I began to answer the questions I came to realize it’s not really an immigration story. It’s a story about women who must navigate in a hostile world and on that level not much has changed.

I agree with Elizabetta. As I thumbed back through the book I felt tempted to reread it, thinking perhaps there was something deeper I may have missed, something more o could take from it. Unfortunately, while I enjoyed sections of it there were many sections that I found arduous to read and I’m not sure I want to put the time in.

I found the book frustrating because it felt uneven and a few sections I found baffling. I am glad I went back over the chronology again and, while I do not usually mind the shift in eras, in several instances it did not add anything to how the story unfolded. There was so much potential for a fascinating family struggle with domestic violence, addiction and patriarchy against the variety of immigration experiences but it falls short.

Like others, I found the book a bit disjointed at times, but overall I liked it.

Good story. Great idea for a book. Needed more punch from the characters. The vagueness was frustrating. I wanted to know more detail and wished the author had delved more deeply into the historical subject of the Cuban Revolution and it's effect on current politics.

I agree that the book was disjointed and difficult to follow. It really told the story of how difficult women had it throughout history. We forget what women had to contend with to get what they needed. I suppose, as now, it somewhat depended on the customers of the family you married into.

I agree with most of the others in that the book was disjointed and difficult to follow. I usually do not have a problem with this type of alternating chronology , but this book seemed more like a collection of short stories. Some unfinished. I was immediately immersed in the first chapter with Maria Isabel; the cigar factory, her life, the reader, the political climate but then along comes Jeanette...

After reading it the second time, I decided I liked the book. However the going back and forth between years and people was confusing. I had to keep going back to the family tree to see who was who.

It was interesting to learn about Cuba and it's culture and history. I don't know much about Cuba, and found learning about it to be the best part of the book. The characters never felt real enough for me to be engrossed in their story.

I loved the story of Maria Isabel and wished the whole book revolved around her. Jeanette was my least favorite character and I ended up skiming parts with her. She just did not seem to go with the rest of the book. I don't mind books that tell alternate story lines; but did not work with this one.

I too would have liked to know more about the women that came before Jeanette. However I did like the book. I came away thinking that had the women been more transparent about their tragic secrets it would have given the next generation more understanding of who they were and brought them closer.

I think I am in the minority, but I didn’t care for this book. The writing was good, but the plot was messy and didn’t make a lot of sense to me.

Justina, I didn’t really feel it lived up to the description nor my expectations either. I’m glad I read it but I won’t recommend it. I think it had a lot of potential but just was perhaps, too short to fulfill the promise it showed.

The first few pages introduced Carmen in an interesting situation talking to Jeannette and I wanted to go further. The next part about Maria Isabel was also engaging- but it occurred nearly 150 yrs earlier. I was expecting more of a story connecting the 2 characters and the events in their lives, but I was disappointed when the author introduced more characters and more time periods. I think the book would have been more compelling if she had woven the lives of the women rather than using the postmodern method of hopping back and forth. I think this could have been a good debut and one that brought to the forefront, the issues that women had throughout the last 150+ years. I did not enjoy the book although I did learn more about Cuba, and what life was like there

I didn’t really enjoy the book. I thought it dragged in many parts and I really hated the skipping around. Like many others mentioned, I would have like to know more about some of the other characters.

I thought this was a super interesting view on multiple generations of immigrants! It was fascinating to see the different perspectives on life & immigration, simply based on the generation/timeframe one is born into. Really enjoyed this read!

I found each woman's story interesting, but it felt kind of piece meal. Just when I was starting to enjoy one woman's story - it switched to another woman. Possibly if it had not jumped around so much in time, I would have enjoyed it more.