Women out of the ordinary.

• Author: Mujica, Barbara
• Position: Women with Big Eyes/ Mujeres de ojos grandes - Book Review

Women with Big Eyes/ Mujeres de ojos grandes, by Angeles Mastretta. Trans., Amy Schlidhouse Greenberg. New York: Riverhead, 2003.

Mastretta fans used to the sweeping panoramas of Mexican society and feisty female characters of the author's novels may be dissatisfied with this book. Women with Big Eyes consists of a series of vignettes, each featuring a woman protagonist. Identified as tias (aunts), a title of affectionate respect used in many parts of Latin America, these women have a lot in common with Mastretta's earlier heroines. They are smart, energetic, independent, and rebellious. The problem is that in most cases the vignettes are too sketchy to give us any notion of story. Set mostly in post-revolutionary Puebla, they do create a sense of the values and mores of a midsized Mexican town, and, taken as a whole, the tins form a collective protagonist that embodies the author's feminist ideals. However, most episodes hang on a trifle. They are so short and undeveloped that we never get to know the characters, and so what happens to them at times seems insignificant. Some of the themes are hackneyed--for example, the middle-class wife who has everything, yet still pines for romance while others are just trivial.

There are significant exceptions, though. One of the most memorable of Mastretta's protagonists is "Aunt Cristina," the clever spinster who fakes her own wedding in order to get the town gossips off her back. Another is "Aunt Charo," who tells lies to protect a Republican poet masquerading as a priest during the Cardenas regime. Still another is "Aunt Jose," who saves her daughter from death by telling her stories. In "Aunt Marcela and Aunt Jacinta," twin sisters face together Marcela's imminent death from cancer. This vignette is longer than most in the book. Here, Mastretta gives herself time to carefully construct her characters through the accumulation of countless significant details. She conveys the love between the sisters in scenes in which they smock identical Easter dresses for their daughters, fantasize about exotic voyages, go to the doctor who diagnoses Marcela's condition, and finally, just before Marcela's death, celebrate their fortieth birthdays with their husbands.

Many of these vignettes are variations on a theme, and at times the book becomes repetitive. Several sketches deal with marital infidelity, which spouses (both male and female) learn to forgive. "Aunt Teresa," who is having an affair, feels a...