Review forthcoming. ( )

I usually have a tough time with historical fiction using people who were once actually alive. It's something about putting words into their mouth. Any fictional story will have to do that - even with the best of intentions, if you went back in time and press the book into their hands, would that person be okay with it? Especially if a reader doesn't know much about someone like the princess Eulalia of Spain. I didn't. But I think Eulalia would like this book. This book also follows the story of Eulalia's nodriza and the wet nurse's son. A famous person, the infanta and one not so famous, the milk brother. The format is interesting - spending time with the two of them as children, but then separating when Eulalia doesn't need a wet nurse anymore. But then their paths cross when they are young adults. Overall, this is a very fluid, vivid novel. The characters of Eulalia and Tomas, the milk brother are both equally present and full of heart, as it moves from Spain to Cuba to the US during the Chicago Worlds Fair. Usually I can compare a book to other books, but this one is tough to do so, maybe because I'm usually not reading historical fiction. But this book surprised me in how much I liked it. Tomas has a deep love for Jules Verne's books and somehow this does share a quality of Verne's books that I can't really describe. I'd say if you liked this book, try 'Galapagos Regained' by James Morrow - kind of a weird mix of Jules Verne and this one.Overall, an interesting piece of literature featuring people or a place I don't know much about. ( )

The Infanta Eulalia of Spain is a disappointment: another girl to add to the royal nursery, rather than the longed-for second son to secure the family line. But she is, nevertheless, a princess and such a child must be raised in state. Officials searching for a wet nurse find and hire Amalia, a woman from Burgos with a bouncing, healthy baby boy of her own, christened Tomás. Amalia is offered a small fortune to come to Madrid to serve at the palace, with one free day each month to meet her husband. Her decision to accept is the point from which several different stories spiral outward, affecting the lives of those involved far into the future. Chantel Acevedo’s novel resurrects, on captivating form, a very real Spanish princess (1864-1958) who questioned convention, who loved and lost and travelled, who wrote with a fierceness and freedom that none of her predecessors had dared, and who sought to broaden the boundaries of her own stifling world...

For the full review, please see my blog:
https://theidlewoman.net/2020/01/27/the-living-infinite-chantel-acevedo/ ( )

This is a fictionalized story of the Infante Eulalia of Spain, the woman who served as her wet nurse, and the son of the wet nurse. Amalia took the position of wet nurse hoping to get money for her family. By doing so she was thrust into life at the palace of the King and distant queen who bore Eulalia, the youngest of her children. Tomas, Amalia's son (milk brother to Eulalia) are infants together. Later as grown ups, Eulalia and Tomas cross paths and he eventually becomes her secretary.

Eulalia travels to Cuba during the Cuban war for Independence from Spain and in spite of the Cubans hating the Spanish, she manages to charm the crowds. Then she goes to New York, and eventually to the World's Fair where she is quite a celebrity. Before leaving Spain, Eulalia wrote of her experiences as a Infante bringing to life the world of arranged marriages (she is in a marriage without love), the suffocating world of royalty, and basic rights for women. No one in Spain will publish the book and Tomas brings it to the United States.

Based on the real Eulalia, a woman who did write of her life, the book is interesting and takes a look at one of the first feminists. ( )