María Isabel

"Canivell Arzú is a prime example of why more attention should be paid to the few exisiting Guatemalan women novelists. Her novel is a family saga, and its 11 chapters, excursus, and epilogue, framed by María Isabel's childhood and death, are generally dialogues that showcase the lives of the rich. Rants against neoliberalism are undermined by excessive attention to characters like the dysfunctional Lord Killarney, foreign locales, and the epilogue's attempt to gather narrative loose ends. Yet, the novel is successful in the sense that writing about this type of Central American family in literature is unusual"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.