Guerra’s novel is a grand if bittersweet valentine to Cuba, and maybe her mother.
What begins as one fictional Cuban woman’s examination of her personal life expands into a broader, deeper consideration of what it means to be Cuban, both for those who left since Castro took power and for those who stayed.
Not coincidentally, Nadia, the protagonist, shares the author’s last name, and, as in Guerra's earlier coming-of-age novel, Everybody Leaves (2012), the similarities between author and character feel purposeful: They're both diarists with careers in the arts, both have parents who were also artists in post-revolutionary Cuba. As the novel opens, Nadia is searching both psychologically and physically for her mother, who deserted Cuba in 1980, leaving behind her husband and 10-year-old daughter for reasons Nadia has never fully known. Thanks to a grant for artists, Nadia travels to Europe, where she receives contradictory information from her mother's former friends and lovers. Readers begin to see Nadia’s unnamed mother as a stand-in for Cuba: deeply flawed yet adored at her peak, now in failing health and living in Russia. Nadia decides to care for her mother and has her brought back to Havana, where she arrives with pages of writing related to a novel that was never published because it was deemed politically dangerous back in 1980—not unlike Guerra's mother Albis Torres' own poetry. Nadia’s endlessly solipsistic observations have been dominating the narration, but now the tone shifts to her mother’s cleareyed mini history lesson about the revolution via fragmented notes about her privileged girlhood in late 1950s Cuba, her adoring platonic relationship with Che, and her mentorship by historical figure Celia Sánchez, lovingly presented here as an altruistic saint, the most important woman in the revolution, and Fidel’s closest confidante. A third tonal shift occurs as Nadia reports on a visit to Miami, where exiles consider their reassembled version of Cuba more authentic than the Cuba where Nadia chooses to remain despite dramatic changes over the next decade.
Guerra’s novel is a grand if bittersweet valentine to Cuba, and maybe her mother.Pub Date: Aug. 3, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-06-299074-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: HarperVia
Review Posted Online: May 18, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
BOOK REVIEW
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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