Although this book of Holte is not a par with One Hundred Years of Solitude, I would say that Holte has the potential that can rival Isabel Allende who is being tagged as the female G.
Marquez due to her use of magical realism in a number of stories recollected by some of her characters who are hiding in the basement during the war. This book is better than maybe half of the books in my read folder. However, the book was thick and other more popular authors distracted my attention so I repeatedly postponed my reading of this book. She was so nice that I promised to read her book soon. I bought this book in August 2009 and parked it unread t for almost 2 years because when I invited Holte to be my friend here in Goodreads, she readily accepted and even commented on some of my reviews. If the good mayor could do that to Manny Pacquiao or to many visiting class B showbiz personalities, why not this Filipino-American author who took great interest to write this exceptional book about the Philippines particularly the City of Manila? A book that covers a sheer span of time in Philippine history from the Spanish era to the waning days of the Japanese occupation in 1945 is definitely a worthwhile read for Filipinos including the many Filipino Americans who are interested to know more about the Philippines and its people. If I were the mayor of Manila, I would give a symbolic key to the city to the Tess Uriza-Holte and declare her as city’s adopted daughter. Sad and lovely, often at the same time, The Five-Forty-Five to Cannes takes us to places where we are happy to linger, in the world and in the human heart. In these stories, Tess Uriza Holthe peers deeply into the inner lives of these women and men.
At the center we find beautiful, bereaved Claudette, wife of the doomed Chazz, making the journey to Cannes, where she, like all the others, remembers her past and draws from it irresolvable feelings of strength and fragility, meaning and emptiness, permanence and loss.
In a series of linked stories, The Five-Forty-Five to Cannes takes readers onto the 5:45 train to Cannes, linking northern Italy with the French Riviera while running like a thread through lives that touch one another in unexpected and often secret ways: Chazz, the heir to a great fortune GianCarlo, a kindhearted young Italian thief Anais, who feels the insults of age and Sophie, a talented young photographer. Tess Uriza's second book, The Five-Forty-Five to Cannes, was a San Francisco Chronicle Notable Book of 2007 and an ALA Notable Book of 2007. When the Elephants Dance is inspired, in part, by the experiences of her father, who was a young boy in the Philippines during World War II. She grew up on a Filipino-American family in San Francisco. TESS URIZA HOLTHE is the author of the critically acclaimed and nationally bestselling When the Elephants Dance.
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