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Overview
Once a month, the refinery workers of the Tropical Oil Company descend upon Tora, a city in the Colombian forest. They journey down from the mountains searching for earthly bliss and hoping to encounter Sayonara, the legendary Indian prostitute who rules their squalid paradise like a queen. Beautiful, exotic, and mysterious, Sayonara, the undisputed barrio angel, captivates whoever crosses her path. Then, one day, she violates the unwritten rules of her profession and falls in love with a man she can never have. Sayonara's unrequited passion has tragic consequences not only for her, but for all those whose lives ultimately depend on the Tropical Oil Company.
A slyly humorous yet poignant love story, The Dark Bride lovingly recreates the lusty, heartrending world of Colombian prostitutes and the men of the oil fields who are entranced by them. Full of wit and intelligence, tragedy and compassion, The Dark Bride is luminous and unforgettable.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780062309266 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 02/27/2024 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 380 |
| File size: | 919 KB |
About the Author
Laura Restrepo is the bestselling author of six novels, including The Dark Bride, A Tale of the Dispossessed, and Delirio, which received Spain's prestigious Alfaguara Prize. She lives in Colombia.
Laura Restrepo fue profesora de literatura en la Universidad de Colombia, editora política en la revista Semana y miembro de la Comisión Nacional para la Paz. Ha escrito destacadas novelas tales como Leopardo al sol; Dulce Compañía, que obtuvo el premio Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz en México y el premio France Culture en Francia; y Delirio, que obtuvo el premio Alfaguara. Actualmente vive en Bogotá, Colombia.
Read an Excerpt
"Dress nicely and brush your hair, I am going to take you to see the other world," Todos los Santos announced one day to Sayonara and her four sisters, Ana, Susana, Juana and little Chuza.
They put on their stiff organza dresses -- the ones reserved for national or religious holidays -- with frills and bibs and broad skirts puffed up with crinoline, like light-colored cotton clouds: baby chick yellow for Sayonara, cotton candy pink for Ana, sky blue for Susana, mint green for Juana and white like the snows of days gone by for little Chuza. They greased down their hair and splashed on perfume, brushed their teeth, put on their stockings and shoes, and started walking behind their madrina, dressed up in their Sunday best on a Tuesday and advancing through briars and underbrush that threatened to tear the organza and messed up their hairdos. In spite of everything, they proceeded carefully and elegantly like country people when they come into town for mass, because Todos los Santos had warned them that if they wanted to know the other world, they had to arrive with their dignity intact.
"So that no one dares to pity us," she said.
"This dress is scratchy, madrina," complained Susana.
"You'll just have to put up with it."
They reached a place away from the fence around the Troco by walking along a path that Todos los Santos knew. They went down a hill and crossed a stream after taking off their shoes to keep them from getting wet, then sat on the rocks to dry their feet, put on their shoes again, brushed their hair again and finally arrived.
"Well, there it is. That is the other world," announced Todos los Santos, in front of a place where the thick vines that clung to the length of the fence had fallen away, and where, due to some oversight in security, there were no armed guards to scare off curious or ill-intentioned people.
Piled one against the other and sheathed in their colorful organza dresses, like packages of bonbons, the five girls could see better than if they had a first-tier box, all five faces pressed against the stretch of wire fence to avoid the quadrangular frames, the five pairs of Asiatic eyes opened so wide and round that they lost their slant. From there they saw what their fantasies had not even attempted to imagine: the mythic and impenetrable Barrio Staff, where the Tropical Oil Company had installed and isolated the North American personnel who held positions of management, administration, and supervision, and which was a reduced-scale replica of the American Way of Life, as if a slice of a comfortable neighborhood in Fort Wayne, Indiana, or Phoenix, Arizona, had been removed and transplanted in the middle of the tropical jungle, with its gardens and swimming pools, its well-manicured lawns, its mailboxes like bird houses, the golf course, the tennis courts and three dozen white, spacious houses, all identical, completely imported, from the bedroom furniture to the first roof tile and the last screw. In the background and on the top of a hill, dominating the barrio, rose a house built of pinewood called Casa Loma, the residence of the general manager of the company, with its ample rooms, its vestibule, terraces, and garages.
For a long time the five girls looked mutely at everything, and since they didn't see anyone appear there inside the fence, they thought the other world was a bewitched and deserted place like Sleeping Beauty's castle. It seemed as if the inhabitants had left suddenly, without time to take any of their belongings with them. A solitary towel lay abandoned at the edge of a pool, the translucent water still agitated by an absent swimmer, an overturned tricycle as if the child who had been riding it had fallen and run to look for his mother, a lawn mower that was waiting for the man who had just gone inside for a glass of water. Objects that shined with a light of their own, still unused, as powerful as fetishes, possessed of a well-being not belonging to the people who use them but rather to the objects themselves.
"Doesn't anyone live here, madrina?" asked Sayonara in a voice lowered out of fear of shattering the mirage, but at that moment the lawnmower man came out of nowhere, started it up, and began working.
"What is that man doing, madrina?" asked Susana.
"He's cutting the grass."
"To give it to the animals?"
"No, he is cutting it because he likes it short."
"What a strange man…," said Ana. "And why do they have those poor people locked behind this fence?"
"We are the ones who are locked away, the ones on the outside, because they can leave, but they won't let us in."
"Why won't they let us in?"
"Because they are afraid of us."
"Why are they afraid of us?"
"Because we are poor and dark-skinned and we don't speak English."
"Look, madrina, the houses are like cages too," said Juana, "they can't come out through the door or the windows."
"Those are screens, so the mosquitoes don't get in."
"The mosquitoes can't get in? And the other animals can't get in either?"
"Only dogs."
"Can the dogs come out?"
"If the people open the door for them."
"What is that woman doing?" asked Ana when she saw the owner of the towel stretch out on a lawn chair to sun herself.
"She is going to lie in the sun."
"Lie in the sun? Then she must have cold blood. Machuca told me that lizards lie in the sun to get warm because they have cold blood."
"No. She wants to lie in the sun to make her skin darker."
"But why do they do that," said Sayonara, "if they don't like dark-skinned people?"
"You have to understand them," said Todos los Santos. "They weren't born here. They are North Americans."
"Why did they come here?"
"To take oil from the land."
"Why do they take it?"
"To sell it."
"Oh! Is it a good business to sell land without oil?"
"What are those two doing?" asked Ana pointing to a pair of women who were chatting at the door of a house.
"They are speaking English."
"Then how do they understand each other?"
"Because they know how to speak English. Inside there no one speaks Spanish."
"Someone should teach them…"
A group of children jumps into the pool to paddle around, a man starts washing his car, a woman picks up a hose and begins to wash her dog. Little Chuza, dazed, watched everything without missing a detail, but she didn't ask anything because little Chuza never opened her mouth.
"They wash dogs, they wash children, they wash cars…," said Juana. "What clean people! And where do they get so dirty, if there's no dirt in there?"
"There is no dirt because they clean it."
"But why do they clean it if there is no dirt…?"
"To keep busy and to kill time until they can return to their country."
"Look, madrina, they're barefoot. Don't they have shoes?"
"Yes, they do. They're barefoot because they like it -- they keep their shoes in their houses."
"So they don't get dirty?"
"Maybe."
"What if their feet get dirty?"
"Then they wash them, like their dogs."
"But why do they wash their dogs?" asked Ana, who never in her life had seen anyone wash a dog.
"So he won't smell."
"Do their dogs smell very bad?"
"All dogs smell the same."
"I heard something," said Sayonara. "Señor Manrique told me. He said that the floors of some houses are covered with wool, like sheep."
"That really is strange!" shouted Susana. "That must be one of Sayonara's lies."
"It's true," confirmed Todos los Santos. "They are houses with rugs."
"What crazy people!"
"And what are those people doing over there, madrina?" inquired Juana, tugging on Todos los Santos's skirt.
"They are playing a game called tennis."
"But they're not children… Adults play too?"
"Yes" said Susana, showing off. "And the one who catches the ball in his hand wins."
"No, the one who throws it the furthest with the racket wins," corrected Todos los Santos. "The racket is that squashed basket they have in their hands."
"And inside there, in Barrio Staff," Ana wanted to know, "do people also die?"
"Yes, they do. Death is the only thing that strikes them whenever it wants."
What People are Saying About This
“Love, lust, despair, pride, violence, magic and irrational hope give depth and texture to this page-turning novel.”
This barrio angel teaches us how to see behind the appearance of things and how to embrace reality with all the senses, above all with intuition, imagination, faith, and humor.
Laura Restrepo brings to life a singular amalgam of journalistic investigation and literary creation. . . . Irrefutably enjoyable reading.
Reading Group Guide
Introduction
A young girl arrives in Tora, a city in the Colombian forest, wild and unkempt and determined to become a puta. Secretive about her past, refusing to reveal even her name, she is adopted by the aging prostitute Todos los Santos, who transforms her into the bewitching and beautiful Sayonara. Sayonara's beauty and aloofness inspire legendary status among the petroleros of the Tropical Oil Company, men who live for their monthly pilgrimages to Tora.
No one is immune to Sayonara's charms, and she reigns in La Catunga, the barrio that is home to the putas -- until she violates an unwritten rule of her profession and falls in love with a man she can never have. Sayonara's unrequited passion and its consequences are at the heart of a story that unfolds in flashbacks and reminiscences told by those closest to her. Drawing on elements of magical realism and crafting them into an original and mesmerizing tale, Restrepo spins evocative, entrancing fiction that captures both the harshness and fierce excitement of Colombia's social underbelly. The Dark Bride is Sayonara's story -- passionate, poignant, and bittersweet. Questions for Discussion- The narrator of The Dark Bride is a journalist conducting research, and much of the story unfolds in a series of memories and flashbacks as she interviews the various characters. What do you think of this technique? In what ways did it enhance the telling of Sayonara's story? How would the novel have differed if it had been told as a straight narrative? What do you think are the narrator's motivations?
- At one point in the story, when conversing withSacramento, the narrator realizes that she has "entered into a world of performances where each person approaches or retreats from his character." What does the narrator mean by this statement? Cite some examples of how this plays out throughout the story.
- About Todos los Santos and Sayonara, the narrator says, "They needed each other, like a fish needs the cloud that will later become water, for obvious and complementary reasons." How would you characterize their relationship?
- The Dark Bride is a work of fiction, but many aspects of the story are based on research the author conducted for a nonfiction article on prostitution in Colombia. Does having this knowledge change how you view the story and the characters? Did any of the depictions of La Catunga and its inhabitants surprise you?
- Todos Los Santos states, "Seen from above, all human life seems like a tangle of whims, becauses, and for-no-reasons, and only by intense scrutiny and thorough searching for its ends, over the long term, do you begin to find a pattern. Even those who are most caught up in the foolishness are clear about their motives for doing what they do, and there is no chance occurrence that isn't, in and of itself, a known result." How would you describe the different motivations of the characters in the book? In what ways are they in conflict with one another?
- Sayonara is fascinated by the postcards that Sacramento sends to her. Why is this? One postcard in particular -- depicting a snow-covered village -- leads to Sayonara's fascination with snow and her many hours of conversation about it with Frank Brasco. What is it about the idea of snow that fascinates Sayonara? What does it represent to her?
- Todos los Santos makes the following statement: "Religion in excess makes good nuns and terrible putas." Does religion play a role in the lives of the putas of La Catunga? How so?
- Why is Sayonara so secretive about her past, not even revealing her name when she first arrives in Tora? How would you relate the circumstances of her childhood-including the deaths of her mother and brother-to the life she grows up to lead? Why does Sayonara eventually seek out her father?
- The rice strike at the Tropical Oil Company is a momentous event in the novel. How does it affect both the petroleros and the putas? Why does Todos los Santos take Sayonara and her sisters to peer through the fence surrounding the quarters where the Tropical Oil Company houses its North American personnel? How does this incident relate to larger themes in the story?
- Compare Sayonara's relationships with Payanés and Sacramento. Sacramento tells the narrator that he could not forgive Payanés' betrayal, and that he also blamed Sayonara for having left him without a best friend. He then says, "Today I regret hurting her with the accusations, but at the time I let myself get carried away with the question that has no answer, whose fault was it, hers, his, or perhaps mine, or was it life's?" Was the situation anyone's fault? What could have each of the three characters done differently?
- How do you interpret the novel's ending?
- Compare The Dark Bride to other novels of magical realism that you have read, including those by Gabriel García Márquez and Isabel Allende.