Mayra Montero

"Dancing to Almendra" is set in Havana in 1957. The story centres on Joaquin Porrata, a young entertainment reporter. When he's assigned a story about hippo being killed at the zoo, he discovers a connection to organized crime that allows him to make the leap from entertainment writing to investigative journalism, as he's hoped, but also endangers his life as he learns and writes more about organized crime in Cuba. As well, Joaquin gets involved with Yolanda, a one-armed former circus show more performer with her own connections to organized crime. Some sections of the novel are narrated by Yolanda as she tells Joaquin about her past, but most follow Joaquin in his investigation.

The novel is an interesting look at Cuba before the revolution. However, I never really cared about the character of Joaquin, so I wasn't too involved in the story. It is only towards the end of the book, when Cuban politics become a more important part of the story and the characters lives that I really cared about what happened. Overall, it was pretty good, but it didn't really grab me. show less

An odd novel about a herpetologist collecting a rare frog in Haiti while forming a relationship with a native guide named Thierry. That, however, does not really explain this book.

There is a dreamlike quality to this book. The narration moves between the two men, sometimes in a confusing way. We learn about Thierry's life in a violent world, a violence that constantly surrounds the pair, threatening them, making their urge to find the frog more intense as time is running out.

The story is show more about love, sex, fidelity, infidelity. It is a story about zombies, cruelty, violence, and environmental destruction. There is tragedy at every turn. And all throughout, the loss of frogs all over the world, the extinctions of species, is ever present.

Definitely not an upbeat book, but a sobering look at a difficult world. show less

Havana, 1957. On the same day that the Mafia capo Umberto Anastasia is assassinated in a barber's chair in New York, a hippopotamus escapes from the Havana zoo and is shot and killed by its pursuers. Assigned to cover the zoo story, Joaquín Porrata, a young Cuban journalist, instead finds himself embroiled in the mysterious connections between the hippo's death and the mobster's when a secretive zookeeper whispers to him that he "knows too much." In exchange for a promise to introduce the show more keeper to his idol, the film star George Raft, now the host of the Capri Casino, Joaquín gets information that ensnares him in an ever-thickening plot of murder, mobsters, and, finally, love. The love story is, of course, another mystery. Told by Yolanda, a beautiful ex-circus performer now working for the famed cabaret San Souci, it interleaves through Joaquín's underworld investigations, eventually revealing a family secret deeper even than Havana's brilliantly evoked enigmas. In Dancing to "Almendra," Mayra Montero has created an ardent and thrilling tale of innocence lost, of Havana's secret world that is "the basis for the clamor of the city," and of the end of a violent era of fantastic characters and extravagant crimes. Based on the true history of a bewitching city and its denizens, Almendra is the latest "triumph" (Library Journal) from one of Latin America's most impassioned and intoxicating voices. show less

If nothing else, this is a rich history of the connection the US and Cuba once had through an institution nearly as romanticized as Joaquín Porrata's adventure into tales of hippopotamus murder, mafia hits, the nightclub scene in Havana and an exotic girlfriend with a missing limb and a special connection that means nothing but trouble for Joaquín.

A breezy read, this was wonderful winter reading. The thoughts of a warm Havana (even with all of the chaos) spread throughout the book. show more Montero's writing is rich and lush, showing through even in the translation. The book takes a few meandering paths that you appear to veer off of entirely, only to find that the paths unexpectedly converge once again. While Montero could have simply thrown together eccentric characters, each is well-written and fleshed out beyond their "purpose" in the story. show less