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Everlasting Nora: 04/08/19

Everlasting Nora

Everlasting Nora by Marie Miranda Cruz is set in Manilla's North Cemetery. Nora and her mother have been living in her father's tomb after he was killed and their apartment home destroyed by a massive fire.

Nora's day to day now is spent preparing flowers and selling flowers to mourners at the cemetery. She also takes on much of her mother's laundry work as she is more and more addicted to her gambling.

Then one day, Nora's mother disappears and she's stuck on her own. The remainder of the novel is Nora doing everything she can to find her mother. She has help from her friend Jojo and his grandmother.

The events of the fire and Nora's life before the cemetery are all told in flashback. As other reviewers have noted, the novel would have been more impactful if events had been told in order. I would have liked to learn more gradually about the mother's gambling and to get to know the father. His death and the loss of the house and the eventual move into the tomb would have been all the more tragic. The novel, though, probably would have been twice as long which would put it close to six hundred pages.

Three stars

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