A Review of Bernardo and the Virgin—Revisited

People ask for criticism, but they only want praise.
W. Somerset Maugham


As I return to teaching—summer vacation having reached its end—I’m taking this week off from writing a new entry. Instead, I’ll act upon a long-held wish to preserve this review of Bernardo and the Virgin, since it is no longer available online. I have to confess that I greatly enjoy Nina Forsythe’s take on Bernardo. The piece originally appeared in the July 10, 2005 issue of the Sioux City Journal.

‘Bernardo and the Virgin’ author to give book signing at local book store.

By Nina Forsythe

What Americans remember about the Nicaraguan Sandinista revolution of the 1970s and the Contra War of the 1980s, if they remember it at all, is the Iran-Contra scandal. That’s understandable, given the press the latter received, but most of us have no idea how the events of those turbulent decades were perceived by Nicaraguans. One of the most fascinating news stories that hardly got any ink in the U.S. was a series of visitations by the Virgin Mary reported by a poor tailor and sacristan in the back of beyond village of Cuapa. The effects of the apparitions, beginning in May 1980, less than 10 months after the Sandinistas had finally toppled the Somoza dictatorship, reverberated throughout a deeply divided, war-ravaged nation.

This real event is the basis for a new novel by Nicaraguan-American Silvio Sirias. Bernardo and the Virgin tells the tale of the seer, the apparitions, and how they touched the lives of the people of Nicaragua. At the heart of this work of fiction is the real-life tailor Bernardo Martínez, but woven around him are the stories of numerous fictional characters whose lives intersect, in one way or another, with his.

And what a motley crew they are. They run the gamut from a giddy, young girl impatient for love to an abrasive seller of religious supplies and her womanizing partner, from a right-wing crusading priest (and CIA operative) to a hardened Sandinista National Security agent, from a devoted 4’11” nun who carries around a 2” statue of the Virgin to a professor having a devastating mid-life crisis. They even include the ex-pat Nicaraguan community in the U.S. Some try to distort the Virgin’s message in various ways, either to undermine the church or to undermine the government, but most are preoccupied by their personal troubles. The stories range from deeply moving to humorous. One of the most hilarious chapters is, believe it or not, about a self-absorbed literary theorist.

The cast of characters, varied as it is, does not become unwieldy because their stories eventually intertwine. As a result, the reader gets a different perspective from an earlier character. Sometimes a later story undermines a previous interpretation; other stories provide a fuller understanding of an earlier event. Not all the characters are equally fleshed out; Father Damian Innocent MacManus, for example, seems more caricature than real. While there are such two-dimensional people in life, they don’t seem to fare will in fiction. Nevertheless, what we come away with in the end is an understanding of Nicaraguans during the latter part of the twentieth century: their suffering and longings, their losses and hopes, their mysticism and bawdiness, their idealism and resignation. The author writes that he hopes to “give readers some insight into what it has meant to be Nicaraguan during such tumultuous times.” In this entertaining and moving novel, he has done so splendidly.