With Negotiating Love in Post-Revolutionary Nicaragua, Turid Hagene has made an important contribution to the literatures on Latin American politics and international gender studies. As she notes, ‘In much of the literature on gender inequalities, economic dependency is highlighted as the major motivation for women to put up with both beating and betrayal’ (p. 13). Economic dependency does not characterise the women she studied for her book, who belonged to the Esperanza sewing cooperative and who, like the vast majority of Nicaraguan women, had worked for money throughout their adult lives. ‘Yet the life choices of the women were often marked by dependency on their past, present, or hoped-for partners, but this dependency was mostly emotionally motivated’ (p. 13). Ironically, women's incomes contributed to making their relationships with men unequal, opening up ‘a space for their partners to direct their time, money and sexual interest toward other women’ (p. 14).

Hagene's fascinating ethnographic data were collected during five visits to Nicaragua during the years 1992 to 2000. That fieldwork was also informed by experiences in Nicaragua dating back to 1985, including over two years spent as a volunteer coffee picker, translator and director of the Norwegian Volunteer Services, and six years married to a Nicaraguan. Hagene starts her analysis with a chapter on religious practices, noting that the women themselves usually did not choose to chat about religion (when they chose the topic of conversation, it was generally related to love). Yet the religious practices of most of her informants serve as a model or metaphor for life on this earth. Saints, the Virgin Mary, the Santísimo (the holy Eucharist stored in a bright metal box shaped like the sun) and sometimes God himself are patrons who may or may not answer requests for help, usually with a health-related problem. Normally something is promised in exchange for that help. ‘One woman made a promise to Santiago, because she said she vivía enamorada (was in love) with that saint, what with his being very serio (serious) and having pretty, blue eyes. Santa Cabeza (the Holy Head) in Nandasmo was chose by one woman because her mother had told her about that image, and her daughter's problem was localized in her head’ (p. 67). Sometimes relationships with supernatural patrons were maintained for a lifetime; often they ended after the favour was repaid. Favours always had to be repaid, however. Hagene relates a cautionary tale about a woman who feared she was losing her eye to an illness. She asked Saint Sebastian to save it, in exchange promising not to dance at his fiesta. He cured her eye, but since the dancing looked like fun, she thought to herself, ‘I don't think he will notice if I go and dance just a little bit’. The saint, of course, noticed. Her eye began to bother her again as soon as she returned home, and she eventually lost it. The moral of the story, as she recounted it: ‘Never make a promise unless you make it de corazón (of all your heart), because that bandido Sebastián left me blind, but why? Because I was bandida’ (p. 69). As Hagene states in the conclusion to her chapter on religion, ‘Patronage clearly is an institution of subordination. However, the women, subordinating themselves to patrons and getting involved in unequal exchanges, did not appear to be victimizing themselves … Rather life could be understood to offer many options, and the art would consist of being able to utilize these possibilities’ (p. 73).

Hagene's chapter on religious practices is followed by three chapters that each present the life story of a different woman. In concluding her chapter on Noelia, Hagene notes,

Those chapters are followed by one on how the women negotiate within a model of gender relations that Hagene calls ‘absentee patriarchy’, a chapter on love and gender, and a conclusion evaluating how traditional gender practices were effectively challenged – or not – during the 11 years of the Sandinista Revolution (1979–90).

Hagene's analysis helps to explain some of the limits of the Sandinista Revolution, such as why many women choose not to take advantage of the child support laws passed by the Sandinistas. She states: ‘In the case of Marcela's mother, it seemed that her husband's contributing to his children's upkeep implied that he was still forming a family with the mother, maybe including his rights … to her domestic and sexual services’ (p. 198). She goes on to explain that

Hagene analyses a number of political changes that were undermined or that had unexpected outcomes due to traditional cultural practices. Such examples do not mean that social change is impossible, however. After recounting interviews with men who expressed the common belief that men cannot be expected to be ‘saints’ (that is, to be monogamous), Hagene tells us the story of Oscar,