A Cloud on Sand:

...The tension between the two partly is motivated by Dora's need for constant affirmation of her daughter's distinctiveness and her sexuality...

...The plot centers on the relationship between Dora di Credi, a grand, flamboyant, unconventional woman, and her daughter, Antonia, at first likely to be subsumed by so ferocious a mother, but who eventually emerges from Dora's domination to become a strong-willed, capable, and beautiful woman...

...Rodolfo, Dora's late husband, revived in flashbacks, who lived in Buenos Aires and made occasional visits to his family...

...Antonia's story, after she leaves Artemisia, is the predictable discomfort of a cultured woman in a peasant society, and we watch Antonia adapt herself as well as she can to life in the New World, gradually earning the respect and love of her neighbors...

...She is training to be a nurse, much to her mother's dismay, when she meets Arturo, a businessman visiting from South America, and decides to marry him...

...Although Dora fails to triumph at the end, although her sense of loss undoes her, although she fails, at last, to understand the meaning of her own life, she stands as the single tragic figure in this novel, and the one who, throughout, commands our attention...

...it may, of course, even kill you...

...Her absence is missed: she is truly extraordinary, and the other characters simply are not as compelling...

...When Arturo presents this proposal to Dora, she tries to seduce him...

...Arturo, as you may have guessed, eventually dies-he is simply too perfect a man to endure-but we know that Antonia, now with a daughter of her own, will manage very well indeed...

...For all of Antonia's underlying strength and "hidden asymmetry," for all of the "glowing coals" ready to burst into flame, Antonia seems far less complex, far less mysterious than her mother...

...When Antonia succeeds in entering a wider world, when she in fact receives attention from admirers, Dora is vengeful...

...At times, De Ferrari complicates the story unnecessarily, for example when she frames Antonia's memories of her life as if she were being interviewed by her niece, Marta...

...Although there are a few peripheral female characters, the most significant secondary roles in this novel go to men: the elegant Count Mora, an elderly gentleman who for a short time is Dora's lover and for a longer time a surrogate father to her children...

...When we meet Dora and her two children-Antonia has a brother, Marco-she is living in a small village on the Italian Riviera, reigning there as Artemisia's most notorious widow, inhabiting a villa far more opulent than any of her neighbors' homes...

...Linda Simon A Cloud on Sand is one of those romantic novels about the struggles between a mother and daughter, set against a background of exotic locales and the distant rumblings of war...

...she seems to be the wrathful queen who would like Snow White's heart on a platter...

...From this point in the novel, Dora disappears-she writes to Antonia, but her letters are intercepted by Arturo and we do not read them until later...

...But Gabriella De Ferrari, whose first novel this is, has created characters of rare charm and set them in a richly detailed context...

...Although the story itself is nothing new, Gabriella De Ferrari writes with clarity and feeling, and there is nothing that escapes her observation...

...Dora is so palpable a presence because De Ferrari has imbued her every gesture with distinction: when we see her walking down the streets of Genoa we know immediately why Rodolfo was so deeply fascinated...

...Dora, says the count, was "the first person I have ever met who had totally invented herself...

...but Arturo is determined to marry Antonia, and afterwards he quickly carries her away to a small, primitive village in what appears to be Peru...

...The mother is domineering, the daughter reticent...

...Can't you see that...

...But you are never more alive than when you are in it...

...She is an indifferent mother, often leaving her children in the care of servants while she takes off for Paris, perhaps, or Monte Carlo...

...Can't you see how she's the center of everything...

...It should come as no surprise that the final rift between them is inspired by a man...

...A Cloud on Sand is an impressive debut...

...ds our attention...

...and Arturo, Antonia's husband, an ideal mixture of strength and compassion, authority and sensitivity...

...Dora, as Count Mora admits, "was like a storm at sea, a typhoon, a force of nature itself...

...When Malta's husband suggests that Dora, not Antonia, is the real center of the tale, Marta insists that he is "very wrong...

...The story is so familiar that, in the hands of a less talented writer, it would be merely a cliche...

...When Antonia is young, Dora usually ignores her quiet, mousy daughter, aiming occasional remarks at her plumpness or bad legs to undermine her confidence and keep Antonia submissive and dependent...

...And the novel is never more alive than when Dora is its focus...

...Surely it is difficult to have Dora for a mother, but Antonia, with Count Mora's moral and financial support, manages to make a life for herself...

...When we see Count Mora's face, "like a round, pink sea with delicate features like tiny islands," we know why Antonia and Marco were so quick to trust him...

...You may not like the typhoon: It may frighten you...

...but in the end, the power shifts so that the daughter claims her own life...

...Dora does not care what anyone thinks of her-and everyone does think of her: she is impressive and unforgettable, and she nurtures her own legend...

...But Marta's husband remains unper-suaded and so, I imagine, will most readers...

...Her mother may have been flamboyant, but Antonia is the one who triumphed over her...