The River Beyond the World

by Janet Peery

Book Overview

A National Book Award Finalist for Fiction

Set in the Texas/Mexico border country in the years from 1944 to the present, The River Beyond the World is the story of two women on the edge of sexual, moral, political, and spiritual divides. Luisa Cant is a girl from a Sierra Madre mountain village. After being impregnated in a fertility ritual of ancient origin, she leaves Mexico to work in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas as a...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312169868
• ISBN13: 9780312169862
• Release Date: September 1997
• Publisher: St. Martins Press-3PL
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 1.00 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

The River alludes to more than water...

Janet Perry's book about two women from two different cultures on either side of the 'River' that divides them, culturally and physically until Lu accepts employment with Eddie is full of allusions and metaphors that are not in your face, but realized after you finish the read and sit back and think. Lu, the protagonist wishes for a simple life where she is free from the 'want' she grew up with in her native village and for a good home for her two children. Eddie, the secondary protagonist/antagonist, wishes for another life, but settles for what she has, and after the death of her husband lives her life pretending she lives in the life of her dreams. Both women interact, both taking and giving in seemingly uneven lifestyles, but in the end, the proof is they both reap and receive their life's rewards. Both realize, after major events in their lives have occurred, goals for which they were both conciously and perhaps subconciously wishing for themselves.This book reads smoothly and the events segue beautifully. I highly recommend this book for anyone wishing to be transported to a place in another time to look over the shoulder of two women whose inner beauty glows through to the reader.

Lyricism and Reality

The River Beyond the World is an amazing, amazing book. Peery is a lyrical writer, but there's a tough reality to what she writes. In my reading/interpretation, it ends up being a very moving novel about misunderstandings and miscommunications based on class, culture and age and how these differences shape the lives of women. The choices the central characters make alternately managed to choke me up with sadness, to make me seethe with rage and caused me to smile with admiration. Well worth the emotional upheaval and the time spent.

BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN, COMPLEX NOVEL

In THE RIVER BEYOND THE WORLD, Janet Peery illustrates an element of human compassion for her characters that is uplifting without being cloying, an element that illustrates the human condition in a way that we as readers can internalize as a tool for interpreting the world.The hallmarks of Peery's writing are the deceptively simple prose style she employs, and the wonderfully apt way she has of capturing dialogue and scene in brief splashes of narrative that illuminate the unspoken depths of the story.RIVER BEYOND THE WORLD is a beautifuly written, complex novel that is fully deserving of the acclaim it has received. Rebekah Mercer

Fine work!

In a writing workshop I attended, Janet Peery said that every story takes place in somebody's back yard, and we like it when it's not our back yard. The Tex-Mex border region is totally unknown to me. Ms. Peery skillfully evokes the flavor of the area with Spanish terms, weather and plant details, and Eddie's fractured Spanglish. This is a fine read

at once beautiful, moving, and eligiac...a triumph!

Janet Peery had quite a journey ahead of her after her first collection of short stories, Alligator Dance. How does one top something that is at once so finitely perfect, so sadly accurate and perceptive of human beings? Read her first novel, The River Beyond the World, and you'll soon find out. She is a rare master of written prose, and her narrative flows together so convincingly you'd be hard pressed to find out how her experiences as a person contribute to the rare and empathetic insight that she brings to the written word. A River Beyond the World is a treat that leaves this reader forever in her debt!