My Darling Dead Ones

June M. Blurton is a retired speech/language pathologist.

Spanning the 20th century, this book consists of a series of stories
about three generations of women. The grandmother and great-aunt live
and die in Lisbon. The mother, an only child, marries in Portugal and
then moves to Canada. Her two daughters, Laura and Fiona, are Canadian.
All five women are bright and charming and attract husbands and lovers.
While they live essentially ordinary lives, their stories are
interesting and are used to highlight the differences and similarities
between the two cultures, as well as the resentments between
generations.

Fiona and her great-aunt share a talent for writing. Free to exploit
her talent in Montreal, Fiona mourns the fact that Portuguese women of a
certain class are required to confine their activities to needlework and
tea parties. On the other hand, she is prepared to accept as normal her
grandmother’s use of a pot scrubber in place of underarm deodorant.
Lehinha, the mother, looks forward to her own mother’s letters from
Portugal and enjoys brief visits to her homeland. But her European
upbringing leads to frustrations in her dealings with the two elderly
sisters; she warns Fiona that when she, Lehinha, is old the same thing
will happen. The relationship between the two Canadian sisters evolves
from childhood squabbling to adult bitterness, and we glimpse the
differences in personality that underlie this bitterness.

My Darling Dead Ones is a very readable book despite the fact that the
theme connecting the individual stories is not always clear.