VANISHING MAPS

A sequel of sorts to the author’s acclaimed first novel.

In the follow-up to her beloved Dreaming in Cuban (1992), García revisits the multigenerational del Pino family, which has sprawled since we last saw them, from Miami to Los Angeles, with stops in Moscow and Berlin. Two decades have passed, and the willful Pilar, a teenager in Dreaming, is now a middle-aged sculptor with a young son of her own; the motherless Ivanito has grown into a polyglot drag queen; Lourdes, Pilar’s mother, as imperious as ever, has involved herself in Miami politics; and Celia, the 90-something matriarch, is revisiting an old flame. García, who has published half a dozen novels since Dreaming, did not really need to come full circle, and perhaps it would have been better if she hadn’t. Though her latest book has the same fluid momentum, flowing dialogue, and flights of magical realism, it doesn’t have the same charming magic. García keeps trying to hit the same note. Again and again, she returns to vivid images from the earlier book—like Pilar’s painting of the Statue of Liberty with a safety pin stuck through the nose—which, like carbon copies, lose their vibrancy with each repetition. The plotline isn’t much to speak of, and the prose isn’t quite as fresh as it might have been—there are all too many adverbs, so Celia, hospitalized, feels a “sharp twinge” where an IV is “snugly taped.” A subplot about a long-lost twin feels like a stretch. All in all, the book has a kind of matte, lackluster quality that is especially disappointing when compared to García’s earlier work.

The del Pino family continues their machinations but without the same vibrancy.