Ana Menéndez

I don't know why there are so few copies of Adios, Happy Homeland! on LibraryThing at the moment, and thus why it isn't better known. It is fantastic.

It caught me off guard because it very much uses the Literary Agent Hypothesis (warning: TVTropes link), which is one of my favorite things in fiction. The book is formatted like an anthology of short stories, including author bios in the back, which is the part that tricked me, until I started reading. All the stories are interconnected in show more some way, and they all share a theme of "flight" (both the literal flying definition and the escape connotation). There is a lot of imagery of trains, balloons, swimming, holes-in-the-sky-to-the-stars, and as related images, wind and the stars.

Ana Menéndez is a Cuban-American author from California. The stories all have a Cuban perspective, which is why I'd originally picked the book up (I wanted to read literature from a place I'd never done before, particularly places in the Caribbean or South America). Some stories take place in Cuba, others in Miami or no-place-in-particular. One story is written in Spanish, though a link is included for an English translation on Menéndez's website.

The book is very modern, with lots of plays on language and meaning...I guess it's postmodern, too? But I mean modern in that it explicitly references the Internet and even has a footnote to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stowaway). I think one of the stories is about the Elian Gonzalez custody battle back in the '90s, but I'm not positive that it isn't about a similar but fictional child. That's one of the things about the stories and the way they play with reality and the meaning of things - it's magical realism, I suppose, and a fictionalization or warping of actual things. There's math in one of the stories, and poetry, and folk meteorology...

At first, once I realized that Adios, Happy Homeland! uses the literary agent hypothesis, I wasn't sure if it wasn't a little amateurish and clumsy because of how obvious some of the themes are. But I think it is a great piece of literary fiction and not so amateur at all - the more I consider it and talk about it, the more I realize how carefully and intricately it is crafted, and those obvious themes are just on the surface.

If anything, the story that follows a woman's life backwards as she succumbs to Alzheimer's and remembers her life in reverse is great. I've never read anything quite like it before, though the premise seems kind of obvious. The Spanish-language chapter I referred to above was particularly amusing to me once I read the translation - it's all about translation and reading in another language.

I truly loved Adios, Happy Homeland! and the experience of reading it. I am so happy that I browsed the library stacks one day and took a chance on it - and I hope that more people will do the same. show less

In this slim novel, Margarita Anastasia Morales (nicknamed “Flash”) is a photojournalist in her late twenties, living alone in Istanbul while her husband, a war-correspondent, covers the war in Iraq. Flash is planning to join her husband in Iraq until she receives an anonymous letter accusing him of adultery while abroad. The letter knocks Flash’s life off its prior path. Spiraling into a state of self-reflection and loneliness (with the help of plenty of red wine), Flash realizes show more “that something essential had begun to give way in [her] marriage” and “that the disillusion we had so long been running from had finally come for us.”

The Last War is an introspective meditation on marriage and identity. As Flash meanders around, both literally through the beautiful streets of Istanbul and figuratively through her memories of her husband, she considers whether she was ever happy in her marriage. Very little action in this novel touches Flash, who seems to be trapped in one of life’s out-of-the-way eddies, but Menéndez’s cutting prose, striped of all pretension, keeps a quick pace. The Last War is a masterful tone piece on love and commitment in the face of war.

This review also appears on my literary blog Literary License. show less

Audio performed by Adriana Sananes and Eileen Stevens

A young woman, born in Cuba but raised in Miami by her maternal grandfather, is determined to finally find the mother who abandoned her – or saved her. Her grandfather didn’t find the scrap of paper her mother had pinned to the infant’s sweater until after they got to the United States. Printed on it was a quote from a Pablo Neruda poem, and this is the only clue she has as she begins to search for her mother. Several trips to Havana show more following her grandfather’s death bring her a sense of the island, but no further clues to her mother’s identity. She has all but given up the search when a mysterious package arrives, bearing no return address but a Spanish postmark. It contains letters, notes, photos and scraps of poetry that reveal a passionate affair between the woman claiming to be her mother – Teresa – and the charismatic Ernesto “Che” Guevara.

Oh, this is lush writing. The reader feels the tropical heat and humidity, smells and tastes the salty sea air, relishes in a faint breeze, hears the beat of a rain storm or the buzz of insects, sees the soft pastels of a decaying city. The beginning and ending sections are narrated by the nameless young woman (and voiced by Eileen Stevens). The middle section is devoted to Teresa’s story (performed by Adriana Sananes), and told in snippets of memories – poetic, erotic, sensual, passionate, and heartbreaking.

Along the way we get a mini-history lesson on the Cuban revolution, told in a very intimate and personal way. There are layers of deception here – Teresa works hard to keep her identity a secret, even from the child she loved enough to let go. And yet, something compels her to relay her story to the one person who needs to understand it. The looming question is whether Teresa’s account – hidden behind false names and inconsistencies with known facts – can be trusted. Is it fact, or fantasy?

Having the audio performed by two talented artists makes this all the more memorable. The performance by Adriana Sananes, in particular, was excellent; she really made me lose myself in Teresa’s story. show less

3.75⭐️

“Homes also dream; they shelter themselves.”

Touching upon themes, of family, relationships, grief, war and trauma, immigration and the American Dream, The Apartment by Ana Menendez is an exceptionally well-written novel that combines elements of historical and contemporary fiction, magical realism and a bit of mystery. This reads like a series of short stories each of which features a tenant of an apartment unit in South Beach, Miami, which is the common thread. Apartment 2B of show more The Helena, an art deco apartment building in Miami, has been home to several tenants over the course of seven decades. Built on land that was historically inhabited by indigenous tribes who were gradually displaced due to colonization, The Helena was built in 1942 and has been home to army officers, artists and painters, veterans, widows and immigrants each of whom is brought to its doors for in search of love, hope, shelter and a place to belong. We also meet members of the maintenance staff and leasing agents who take care of the property in between occupancy.

Ana Menendez’s writing is beautiful and each of the characters and the premise of their individual storylines are well-developed. The narrative flows at a fast pace but I should mention, however, we only get to know about these characters for the duration of their residence in apartment 2B and we get hints about what transpired in a few of their lives after they left The Helena. Not all of these stories are happy ones – in fact, there is a sense of loss and despair that pervades the apartment and the lives of its tenants, each of whom leaves a part of themselves and their stories within the walls of the apartment – a vibe, an emotion, an aura. This is not an easy read. The stories revolve around several sensitive topics including PTSD, suicide, spousal abuse and much more. The author captures the loneliness, hopes and broken dreams of these characters with much clarity and compassion. However, we don’t get to meet the residents of the other units until the final 20% of the novel when we meet Lana,resident of 2B in 2012, an artist who is mourning a loved one and is being watched over by the spirit of a former tenant. While I enjoyed the trajectory of the final story and appreciated how it echoes the overall spirit of the novel, I did think the ending was a tad convoluted.

I was drawn to this novel on account of the premise and overall, I was not disappointed. I wouldn't hesitate to recommend this novel to those who enjoy character-driven fiction. This is my first Ana Menendez novel and I look forward to exploring more of her work.

“Apartment 2B settles into itself. The light inside dims— a passing cloud shadow. These rooms are rarely empty. Painters, models, artists, mothers, fathers, strangers. For decades now, always someone wearing down the pine floors, someone’s breath disturbing the air. No one thinks that homes also need pauses, pockets of silence. Homes also need time to gather themselves, time to simply rest. All that sheltering and holding, that gets exhausting.” show less