Dreaming in Cuban [Paperback]

I didn't really find either the story or the characters as emotionally engaging as I thought I would (Celia was my favorite) and this was a huge disappointment.

DREAMING IN CUBAN revolves around three generations of women (women, all of whom are a bit mad, play the predominant role in this book, although there are male characters) each attempting to come to terms with the revolution in Cuba in her "own" way.

Celia del Pino has chosen to remain in Cuba, come what may, as has her daughter, Felicia. Celia's other daughter, Lourdes, however, has emigrated with her husband and baby daughter, Pilar, to New York City, leaving even Miami behind. Lourdes is convinced that, in order to leave Cuba behind, the family must also leave any trace of "Cubanness" behind...and this includes palm trees and warm weather.

The third woman who is pivotal to the story in DREAMING IN CUBAN is Lourdes's daughter, Pilar, whom we see at various stages of her growth. I found it very difficult to identify with either Lourdes or Pilar because they were simply "too American." (That may be the very reason you do identify with them, though, so that is certainly not a criticism of the book, just an observation.)

Pilar, an aritst, comes to see herself as the proverbial "dyed-in-the-wool" New Yorker. For her, Cuba exists only in absence. It simply isn't a presence in her life. She doesn't have to take any action to obliterate its memory from her consciousness although she does, at times, dream of returning to Cuba to live with Celia (her grandmother).

Lourdes, Pilar's mother, is a far different story. She wants to feel as American as does Pilar, and she certainly tries, but feeling American is something that, for Pilar, is far easier said than done. Lourdes, though, is the quintessential "survivor" and she's determined to make a life, and a good life, in New York. She opens the Yankee Doodle Bakery and it's so successful that she opens yet a second one.

While Lourdes is determined to assimilate herself into New York and even the cold, grey, winter weather, she still finds, to her dismay, that she hungers for the lush, tropical warmth of the south. This results in an ever-growing appetite for her husband, Rufino and for sticky buns, a hunger that eventually causes Lourdes to gain almost 120 pounds. Although Lourdes consciously wants no part of Cuba, it seems as though Cuba "owns" a very large part of her.

Celia, to me, was the most interesting character in the book and the one with whom I felt the most empathy. Perhaps it's because she chose to remain in Cuba. Perhaps it's the poignant story of her brief but intense love affair with Gustavo, a man she never forgets and a man she writes to on the eleventh day of every month...because that's the day he left her.

Cristina Garcia does write beautiful prose. It's lyrical, it's haunting and it is, at times, quite hallucinatory. And the book has an intense, magical, mystical quality that I really loved. But structurally, DREAMING IN CUBAN is a mess. From the very first page, the book is difficult to follow. It jumps from year to year and character to character and even from decade to decade, seemingly without rhyme or reason, often leaving the reader feeling quite disoriented. There is a family tree in the front of the book and whenever I see a family tree in a work of fiction, I get a bad feeling about the book. Family trees are usually inserted into fiction books because the writing isn't clear enough for us to keep the characters straight.

DREAMING IN CUBAN has some wonderful stuff in it, but the characterization suffers from Garcia's fragmentary writing style as does the story. I think it's a good first effort, and a sophisticated one, but I think a clearer, cleaner narrative would have allowed readers a lot more emotional engagement with the characters and, overall, improved this book greatly. It's a shame the structure is such a mess because the writing is really quite lovely.

I would recommend this book to people who can't get their fill of Latin American literature (though Garcia lives in the US) and I will read more of Garcia's work myself, despite my misgivings about DREAMING IN CUBAN. This author's writing is just too good to dismiss with her debut novel.