Boston Teran

REVIEWS

.........................................................................................................................

MATCH
14 December 2006

BLACK FRUIT IN SEASON
by Christine Gomariz

BOSTON TERAN STORMY CHECK WOMEN

One place, two generations, three women. This is how you “define” the new novel by the mysterious Boston Teran, of whom we know absolutely nothing! Not his real name, nor his biography, nor what he looks like. We’re in the 1950s in the heart of the Bronx. Clarissa, a young illiterate worker of Italian origin, lives in fear of the violence of her husband, Romain, who has not forgiven her for having given birth to two deaf-mute daughters. After the accidental death of the older one, she watches over Eve, her last-born, as best she can. Then she meets Fran, a German refugee in the United States who has fled the Nazi barbarity. It is she who gives the child the means to communicate through teaching her sign language, and then she takes her in after Clarissa is beaten to death by her drug dealer husband. We then follow the fate of these women up until the 1970s — their steadfast putting up with things as they are, their stubbornness to survive in the face of the violence that surrounds them, in a neighborhood that changes over the course of the years. Hard drugs burst on the scene, as well as the explosion of racism, the transformations of New York that act both as a trigger and as an echo of the personal dramas of the heroines. What we have here is at the same time a magnificent portrait of these wounded but combative women and a picture of a decaying city. A beautiful hymn to solidarity, profoundly moving.

Three Women by Boston Teran, translated by Frank Reichert, published by Le Masque, 479 pages, 21.50 €.

.........................................................................................................................

LE FIGARO
18 December 2006

THE BOOK OF THE DAY

Destinies in the Bronx

Three Women by Boston Teran, translated from the American by Frank Reichert

The Bronx, 1950. A woman who has very little, who is Catholic and uneducated, a worker in a clothing factory, Clarissa Leone is going on 29 when she becomes pregnant again. There’s no way she can discuss this with her husband, the macho Romain, an alcoholic and violent good-for-nothing who makes life difficult for her and Mary, their three-year-old daughter, a deaf-mute. Clarissa rightly fears that once again she will give birth to a handicapped child. With good reason: it turns out that the young Eve is also a deaf-mute. The father is furious. But when the older sister dies, a victim of the squalor they live in and an obvious lack of care, Clarissa decides to take her youngest child away from this vicious circle. Her salvation comes in the form of Fran Kuhl, a German refugee stamped by the Nazi barbarism, who runs a candy store in the neighborhood and who Clarissa befriends. Fran knows sign language and offers to teach it to Eva. Eva, a lively and curious girl, is eager to learn. She tries to ward off the destiny of society and of her family during that era, which only makes things more difficult, and her task will not be easy …. Tough, strong, moving, this fourth novel noir by Boston Teran, the mysterious author of whom one knows virtually nothing other than that he himself comes from the Bronx, surprises us, in biting and inspired language, giving us an extraordinary plea against the injustices that are dealt out to the very weakest. We will not soon forget the destiny filled with the sorrows of these three deeply moving heroines ….
— Delphine Peras

Published by Le Masque, 479 pp., 21.50 €

.........................................................................................................................

ELLE
18 December 2006

ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE BRONX

A tale noir of a young deaf woman, mistreated by a violent father and the society that is all around her.

Can one still speak in terms of a “mystery novel” when it comes to a book such as Three Women, which is more an autopsy of a society than of cadavers? In any case, this is a wonderful and melancholy story, which takes place between the 1950s and 1970s in the Bronx, where diverse groups coexist. Here there is a culture of misogyny, racism and violence. The story opens with Clarissa, who is in a bad marriage to Romain, a bad guy who holds his wife responsible for the birth of their two deaf daughters. Through beating her, he forbids her to teach sign language to the girls, and does not hesitate to use them as a cover for his pitiful drug deals. The plot revolves around Eve, the deaf child, who becomes a rebellious young woman and then a talented photographer. But how to escape from this nest of damned souls, this jungle in which the concepts of good and evil vanish into thin air? A passionate book that asks countless questions and thrusts you into an era that is not all that far in the past …

Three Women by Boston Teran, translated from the English by Frank Reichert (Published by Le Masque, 479 pages.)

.........................................................................................................................

BIBLIOGRAPHIC NOTES

Boston TERAN
Three Women

In the neighborhood of the Bronx from the 1950s to the 1970s, Italian, Greek and Slavic immigrants were rubbing shoulders with Jews and black Americans. In this melting pot that is so emblematic of America, shot through with multiple inter-ethnic tensions, three women are trying to survive the sexual, physical and moral torments that are imposed upon them by an unjust society and the perverse machismo of men. Clarissa, an Italian worker, subjugated by a violent husband who robs corpses and is a small-time drug dealer, is the mother of two little deaf girls. Only Eve, the older of them, will survive. She achieves the dream of emancipation from her mother in becoming a well-known photographer, aided by Fran, a German Jew who had been tortured by the Nazis, who will be her “savior.”
A novel noir with engaging characters, Three Women denounces with strength and justice the violence and injustices of society. Boston Teran, a photographer just like his young heroine, puts his “mind’s eye to the work,” adjusts things, turns them around, modifying the camera angles, as it were. He gives dimension to the canvas with an urban background, depth to the web of life of bodies and souls in a poignant journey. (Reviewed from the galleys.)

.........................................................................................................................

PREMIERE
January 2007

HOMEGUIDE BOOKS

THREE WOMEN
by Boston Teran
Published by Le Masque, 470 pp., 21.50 €

This would be a good movie. . . .

WITH THREE WOMEN, THE ENIGMATIC BOSTON TERAN PUTS HIS SIGNATURE TO A DENSE AND DISTURBING WORK THAT WILL NOT LEAVE YOU INDIFFERENT. QUICK, THE MOVIE!
by HUBERT PROLONGEAU

We don’t know anything about Boston Teran, the J.D. Salinger of mystery novels. Who is he? Where does he live? What does he look like? A mystery. Fortunately, we have already been able to judge the immense expanse of his talent thanks to the icy Satan in the Desert (05). With Three Women, the writer confirms the power of his inspiration. Through a tight plot that spans two decades of American life, Teran X-rays the permanence of evil and inextricably combines the fates of a young deaf-mute girl whose mother is beaten to death by her father and of Fran, a German woman stamped by the Nazi violence who takes the girl in. The inexorable clarity of Teran’s vision leaves us both speechless and disturbed.

The ideal cast

The director. Three Women: the title was already used by Robert Altman in 1977 for a wonderful and sadly forgotten film with Shelley Duvall. Speaking of forgotten, we haven’t had any news for some time now about Kathryn Bigelow (photo), in which virile movies (Point Break, 1991) were, in their best moments, haunted by terribly appealing female presences. Bigelow would probably be able to bring to life on the large screen the violence of the novel by Boston Teran.