The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love

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, 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 show more 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 and culture.

Cesar Castillo, the Mambo King himself, is an old man, and is remembering his life (and loves) in Cuba and New York as he approaches death. In the middle of the book is a quote that perfectly describes Cesar’s life: “Me siento contento cuando sufro,” he sang one day, “I feel happy when I’m suffering.”

Cesar and his younger brother Nestor arrive in New York full of ambition and desire to be musicians. They are talented and willing to work hard, and with some luck, put together an orchestra (The Mambo Kings), riding the popularity of the mambo craze of the late 1940s. They even get a guest appearance on “I Love Lucy” after Desi Arnaz catches their nightclub act one evening. The appearance gives them a measure of celebrity show more and helps them to sell several records. But true fame is just beyond their reach.

Nestor is an incredibly talented trumpet player and songwriter, but he suffers from unrequited love for the woman who left him when he still lived in Cuba. He marries Delores and starts a family, but still pines for the “Beautiful Maria of My Soul” of whom he sings. His deep melancholy ends only when the car he is driving skids off the road in a snowstorm, killing him.

Cesar has always been the driving force for the Mambo Kings – a handsome, suave, baritone who charms the audience and spreads his favors among the many women he “loves.” He’s generous to a fault, freely bestowing gifts and money on those he befriends, as well as supporting his family members still in Cuba. But after Nestor dies, he simply cannot continue to be the leader he once was. He descends into a depression that begins slowly to eat at him, fueled by drinking and excess.

It is a melancholy story, but lyrically told and impassioned. Cesar’s reflections on his life give us a moving portrait of the man, his community and the times. Hijuelos writing is evocative and moving; the book leaves my heart aching for Cesar and Nestor. show less

This is one of those breathless books. The kind that speaks in clauses. And sometimes phrases. And includes sentences with lots of commas, as when you list the parts of speech like noun, verb, adverb, adjective, and pronoun. It is the kind of book that makes me dizzy.

I bought this book a long time ago because I knew it was a Pulitzer Prize winner. It sat on my shelf for awhile, but I picked it up recently after receiving "Beautiful Maria of My Soul" as an Early Reviewer.

My immediate reaction after the first 50 pages or so was that I rereading "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao." It had that same stream of conciousness kind of feeling to it. That same dizziness.

Eventually, though, Mambo Kings grew on me. I think the thing that made show more it work better than Oscar Wao was the whole setting. An old man, Cesar Castillo, is sitting in the Hotel Splendour, listening to one of his old records and thinking back on his life. The stories he remembers are in no particular order and while that may be hard for the reader to grasp early on, it is true of the way most of us reminisce. One thing leads to another but often not chronologically.

The stories are infused with lots of sex and lots of music--two things that define most of Cesar's life. Sometimes it can seem a bit much to the reader, but then again it seems true to the character of Cesar. Those two things WERE just about all he thought about, so any night thinking back on his life would necessarily revolve around them.

Mambo Kings wasn't my favorite book, but it's one I'll remember for awhile. It stretched me as a reader and brought me out of my comfort zone, which is a good thing. I'm anxious to begin "Beautiful Maria" now. I am curious to know if Hijuelos uses the same device to tell the story or goes for a more traditional narrative. show less

Oscar Hijuelos has a most wonderful gift for words. When you enter the story of the Castillo brothers, you are virtually there… back in 1950s… traveling with them from Cuba to New York City. You are sure to enjoy entering their world of live entertainment at the height of the Latino big-band era.

Cesar and Nestor Castillo came to the United States with the hopes of achieving the American dream and their musical talent took them a long way towards that goal. Their claim-to-fame was being discovered by Desi Arnez while performing one night at New York’s famed Mambo Nine Club. Upon learning the brothers came from the same small village in Cuba as Desi, he invites them to appear on the "I Love Lucy" show. And though it was one sole show more appearance that lasted no more than 5 minutes, it turned out to be a very big break for the Castillos. TV in that era consisted of only 3 basic channels and "I Love Lucy" was one of the most popular shows on TV. The Castillo brothers became overnight heroes… in their homeland in their village where they grew up, and in the Bronx.

But the life of a professional musician is not an easy life. Working daytime jobs, performing several nights a week, and jamming every free moment in-between left little time for much else. They lived for their music. They wrote their own songs, “ballads, boleros, and an infinite variety of fast dance numbers. Songs about flirtation, magic, blushing brides, cheating husbands, cuckolds, and the cuckolded, flirtatious beauties, humiliation. Happy, sad, fast and slow.”

One of the most creative descriptions in The Mambo Kings is a full page narrative of the sound of the drums... a small sample, “plates-and-coffee-cups-shattering-in-a-pile drums, wild-native-banging-a-row-of-human-skulls-bones-flying-through-the-air drums, Chinese-chimes drums, and men-hitting-men drums, and then rapping-coffin drums, all drums, bata, congo, bongo, quinto, tumbadora drums, booming like storm clouds, beautiful-women-shaking-their-life-giving-hips drums, a-million-bells-falling-out-of-the-sky drums” and on, and on, and on.

Evoking all the reader’s senses, the author provides vivid descriptions… not just of musical sound, but of the taste and aromas of food- pig roast and pork chops, rice and beans, chicken and plantain fritters. And of clothing for the men: black tuxedos, pin-striped suits, cuffed trousers, white silk pantaloons and frilly-sleeved shirts, zoot suits, white gloves and hats, and Cuban-heeled shoes. For the women… “skull-hugging turbans, banded berets, feathered pillbox caps, creamy white pearl necklaces hanging down into low-riding necklines, breasts plumped up and sweet underneath: sequined dresses with lit skirts and pleated midriffs, Frilly slips, step-ins, girdles and garters, brassieres, lacy-fringed and transparent at the nipples” and the vivid portrayals continue almost endlessly.

With depictions of passion of physical pleasure in every imaginable form, this book might have been classified as soft porn… but winning the Pulitzer Prize moved it right into the category of ‘classic literature’. To report that the sex scenes are merely abundant would be quite an understatement.

"The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love" confirms the age-old cliche about “hot Latin lovers.” So if you find graphically sensual sex scenes offensive, you may just want to skip this book. But be assured, if you do choose to read it, you will be hard pressed to find a more authentic, real-to-life, passionate, nostalgic, entertaining novel about the 1950s American/Latino cultural experience. show less

I wanted to love this book. It has a genuine flavor of time gone by, of the days just before and during the Cuban revolution that brought Castro to power and transported so many Cuban citizens to America. It is a trip behind the curtain, into a different culture and the hopes and dreams of a handsome musician, Cesar Castillo, and his brother, Nestor.

I wanted to love this book, but I didn’t. There were parts of it that were marvelous, but there was a kind of shadow that stood between me and Cesar, and I found myself just watching him, instead of knowing him or feeling him. Which is ironic, because feeling him is 50% of what this book is about. For Cesar is a “macho”, a man of virility, a man who lays every woman he meets, wants to show more lay even his sister-in-law, and I would say, finds very little else to admire about a woman beyond her sexuality.

There is a kind of sadness in the life Cesar lives, and the sex is part of it, because the focus on sex precludes him from ever making a connection that lasts. He is a man of dreams, but in the end, he has a moment of fame that involves a guest shot on I Love Lucy and a tenuous connection with Desi Arnaz. He lives a lifetime off that moment and a song that his brother writes that almost achieves them fame.

He has friends and family, but I could never decide if we were supposed to believe this was enough to make a life worthwhile or see his life as a wasteland. I confess that I settled on the latter, which made the book have no upside for me and left me feeling as if I had viewed a picture painting of disappointment and despair. I could not find one single character in the entire book who lived anything close to a fulfilling or happy life.

I do not feel that I am a prude. The sexual exploits in Cesar’s life are a necessary part of the narrative to understand who he is and what drives him, but I do not need explicit and detailed descriptions of every carnal act, thought, and desire. I always feel something can be left to the imagination and feel a little resentful when an author assumes he might be the only person who knows about sex, so he needs to explain it to the rest of us. More effective, I would think, to tell me how it makes Cesar feel, why he acts as he does, than a three page description of fellatio itself. In fact, my main objection to the book would be the repeated (and I stress this is not once or twice) descriptions of body parts and the fact that this man could not even attend a funeral without thinking about sex with the women in attendance. I realize this almost pornographic element would not bother everyone and would actually be an enhancement for some. Apparently, it appealed to the Pulitzer Committee.

Perhaps I am just worn out with this theme. [b:The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling|99329|The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling|Henry Fielding|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1444450775l/99329._SY75_.jpg|1350343], which was the last novel I finished before this one, was one sexual romp after another, and the [b:The Saga of Gösta Berling|6358385|The Saga of Gösta Berling|Selma Lagerlöf|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348424032l/6358385._SY75_.jpg|1623527], before Jones, was much the same. I am definitely looking for a book that is about a celibate for my next read, maybe it is time for another Brother Cadfael. show less

"Beautiful Maria of My Soul. A song about love so far away it hurts; a song about lost pleasures, a song about youth, a song about love so elusive a man can never know where he stands; a song about wanting a woman so much death does not frighten you, a song about wanting that woman even when she has abandoned you."



Oscar Hijuelos's novel The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love is a beautifully written historical novel about Cesar Castillo, who comes to New York City from Cuba in 1949 with his younger brother Nestor with the dream of becoming successful musicians. For a short period of their tumultuous lives, this dream does come true.



At the end of his life in 1980, Cesar has deliberately ensconced himself in The Hotel Splendour, to die show more alone. This is his story, told in flashback. As the reader will surmise immediately, Cesar Castillo never became rich, never lived an easy life, and the excessiveness of his lifestyle--the constant drinking, the lack of sleep, the womanizing--are there to drown out Cesar's deep-seated emotional problems and unhappiness. Cesar is the brother who is always able to hide this melancholy from himself and others, yet when the withdrawn, taciturn Nestor dies, his defenses crumble. It is as if Nestor bequeathed his depression to his older brother, to carry along with the self-destructive habits that were already there.

Cesar Castillo is a richly drawn character who has his good-natured, generous A side, along with his dastardly B side. He is crippled by the need to be macho, but there is a love-starved, abused boy that is still crying out for help. And so, at the end of his life, there are people he has hurt as well as people who will remember him fondly and gratefully forever.

Oscar Hijuelos made every character's pain throb on the page, but this is not a hard book to read. He made Cesar's alcoholism painful and his sexual urges unbearable.

The author also brings a time period and culture back to life in this story. I enjoyed the book very much!



Mambo Kings Sing Songs of Love won the Pulitizer Prize in 1990. show less