Oscar Hijuelos (1951–2013)

What a lush, gorgeous, heart-wrenching read this is! Hijuelos possesses the rare gift of being able to pack more poetry, passion, and pathos into a sentence than some authors spend their lives aspiring to achieve. For once, I wholly concur with Pulitzer Prize folks – this novel deserves to be celebrated.

Ostensibly, this is the story of two Cuban bothers, Nestor and Cesar Castillo, both musicians, who find themselves in right place at the right time: New York City in the 1940s and '50s, show more just as Latin music is achieving the pinnacle of its popularity in the US, thanks to cultural forces such as the renaissance of Cuban pleasure tourism and I Love Lucy, which invited loveable Ricky Ricardo, Cuban band leader, into living rooms across America.

The brothers seem to have all the things that they *should* desire at their fingertips: talent, fame, friendship, women. And yet, over the course of the novel, each finds themselves struggling to accept that all the things the world tells them they *ought* to want (friends, fame, sex, respect, machismo) have little to do with what their hearts actually want: in the case of Cesar – the outgoing, hearty, larger-than-life bandleader brother – it’s the pure, unconditional love of family which, in his eagerness to embrace pleasure, he’s carelessly discarded; in the case of Nestor – the brilliant but melancholy trumpet player brother – it’s the love of the beautiful woman who betrayed him, she of the haunting song “Beautiful Maria of My Soul.” (If you’ve never heard it, do yourself a favor and Spotify it now – it’s gorgeous.)

I get that people who are reading this for plot may be disappointed, because it’s not a plot-driven novel. Not that this isn’t overflowing with an enormous cast of captivating characters and luscious set-pieces: smoky dance halls crowded with dancers enthralled by sensuous Cuban rhythms; tiny apartments overflowing with the boisterous energy of jamming musicians; tables groaning with platters of savory Cuban foodstuffs; the overripe fields of rural Cuba. Contributing to the sense of intimacy and authenticity: the fact that Hijuelos appears to have done a ton of research, allowing him to evoke a sense of time and place that’s almost photographic in its detail and immediacy. The way he interlaces the names and careers of actual Latin music greats – Perez Prado, Tito Puente, Desi Arnaz – further blurs the line between fact and fiction.

But primarily this is an exploration of the human heart, a book about joy and melancholy, pleasure and pain, life and love, desire and memory, passion and loss. And the way that Hijuelos evokes the final days of Cesar’s life – a waterfall of disordered but vivid memories, celebrations, revelations, and regrets? (Not a spoiler: it's the organizing premise of the novel.) Much of the time, unable to figure out whether I should be smiling or crying, I found myself doing both simultaneously.

Perhaps not everyone’s cup of tea, but I found this to be raw, lyric, and absolutely enthralling. show less

I had no idea what to expect from this book. I bought it because it was $2 and the title sounded interesting.

From the beginning, I was hooked. It is written so well that I truly did get lost in the story of Nestor and Cesar. I loved the descriptions of food, dance, Cuba, New York, and of course the music. Like many have noted, there is a great deal of sex in the novel. This didn't bother me in the least because sex is obviously a huge part of who Cesar is.

A fascinating look at another time show more and culture. show less

Oscar Hijuelos’ 1988 novel, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love is understandably a critically acclaimed and award-winning work of breadth and depth; of passion, compassion and empathy; and of growth and maturing. Mambo Kings follows its characters through the multiple, interwoven arcs of their lives, with “cameo appearances” crafted from, and in tune with, those characters’ time and place. Within the context of its Cuban-American ethnicity – of whole families and friends moving to show more the U.S. for better lives, or to escape (or avoid) Castro’s Cuba, trying to build new “American Dream” lives together in a strange land – Mambo Kings reaches far and accomplishes much of its aim. Yet Mambo Kings also manages to develop each of its principal characters in individual portraits, each with his or her own hopes and dreams, and sadness, disappointments or regrets. The novel’s framework of flashbacks and recollections of one character lends coherence to the whole, with strong flavors of Cesar Castillo’s exuberant youth and melancholy old age.

Beautiful Maria of My Soul is Hijuelos’ 2010 follow-up to Mambo Kings, which ultimately succeeds in its own right, albeit with a very different framework and focus. In developing “the rest of the story,” Beautiful Maria tells of much the same communities, the same historic context, even some of the same characters. The later novel’s scope, however, is considerably smaller: where Mambo Kings gives us breadth and depth, in sweeping arcs, flashbacks and recall, Beautiful Maria offers a slow, steady progression of time and events, full of the hopes and fears, and recurring losses, worries and griefs, of a simple – at times, even shallow – country girl, making what she can of her life with limited resources and fewer prospects. In some ways, Maria’s path seems pedestrian or predictable; but therein lies a truth born of her story's realism. Despite the aura of mystery surrounding her in Mambo Kings, and her compelling presence (even in absence) throughout that earlier work, the Maria of Beautiful Maria is no Cinderella. Any reader who approaches her story with false expectations of more Mambo Kings will likely be disappointed.

These novels are bookends of sorts, each standing on its own, but each also inevitably, inherently and inextricably connected to the other, just as Maria’s and Nestor’s love and fates are intertwined. Between them, Hijuelos has given us not one, but two novels, which – for all their similarities and differences – together offer divergent, yet complimentary views of a larger tale.

And the final, post-modern twist at the end of Beautiful Maria (no spoilers!) ultimately has a feeling of fun, a light-hearted bonus or lagniappe, like dessert at the end of a feast. show less

3.5***

Hijuelos’ debut novel spans five decades, telling the story of the Santinio family from 1929 in Cuba to 1975 in New York. Alejo and Mercedes emigrate to New York City from Cuba in 1943, where he finds work as a cook in a fancy hotel and she tries to make a life in an apartment so far from her childhood estate. They have two sons, Horacio and Hector, who struggle with their own identities; are they Americans or Cubans? It is a love story, a family saga, a coming-of-age story, and a show more novel of the immigrant experience.

Alejo is a man who has never met a stranger. He is exuberant and generous, always the life of the party, a loyal friend and a ladies’ man. But he is consumed by want. His life is not what he envisioned and he cannot understand how things went so wrong. He drinks to drown his sorrows and descends into melancholy. He doesn’t recognize how his actions push his children away, when all he wants is to be recognized as THE MAN and a FATHER to be respected.

Mercedes is a woman who lives in the past. She cannot let go of past glories of life with her father when she was a young girl. She loves Alejo, but the man he has become is a stranger to her. She is alone because of her lack of English and her reliance on saints and signs and dreams and mysticism. Fiercely protective of her children she doesn’t recognize that her smothering is harming them rather than helping them.

Horacio grows as a nearly feral child. Clearly his parents’ violent arguments affect him and he turns to his friends and to the streets, finally escaping into the U.S. Air Force.

And baby Hector is trapped in his own skin and desperately seeking an escape. He is neither Cuban nor American. Neither a man nor a son. His father dotes on him, but he cannot return the affection of this man who is so unreliable and prone to drunken violence.

Hijuelos’s writing is vivid and passionate, with scenes that are ethereal and full of mysticism contrasted with scenes of brutal reality. People yell in anger, whoop in celebration, cry in despair and wallow in silence. show less