Review by Booklist Review
Gimbel went to Cuba, she told a customs agent, to "search for my grandmother's Cuba." The author spent summers on the island with her father's family in the '50s; when she returned in the '90s, she met the multigenerational family whose story is the core of this nostalgic portrait. Dona Natica, half-English, is bourgeois, but thinks like an aristocrat, cherishing now-worthless china and crystal, repeating prerevolutionary racial stereotypes, trying to ignore the world outside her door. Her daughter Naty married an older doctor and glittered in Havana's cafesociety until she fell in love with Fidel Castro, supporting his revolution, and bearing his quasi-acknowledged daughter Alina, who left the island for the U.S. in 1993. (Naty's husband and other daughter, seven years older than Alina, emigrated in 1961; Alina's daughter Mumin joined her mother in the U.S.) Havana Dreams is full of vivid detail and fascinating history; however, Gimbel's contempt for Castro and her resentment--as a child abandoned by her own mother--of the less than adequate mothering skills of Naty and Alina render her gracefully written analysis of these complex people and their nation oversimplified, venomous, and sentimental. --Mary Carroll
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The centerpiece of this highly personal, disjointed history of modern Cuba is a brief affair between a married Havana socialite named Naty Revuelta and Fidel Castro, carried out mostly in love letters written in 1953-54 while the future dictator was in jail. The affair fizzled, but not before Castro supposedly left his paramour with a daughter, Alina, who created a minor sensation in 1993 when she immigrated to the U.S. and joined protesters demonstrating against the Cuban leader's 1995 U.N. appearance in New York City. Castro never publicly acknowledged the legitimacy of the daughter, and though references are made to photographs of the Cuban leader and Alina together, none are included here. Gimbel (Edith Wharton) interviewed four generations of Revuelta women to reconstruct the family's story through their sad experiences as deposed Cuban elites, scorned lovers and defectors. The result is a virulently anti-Castro document with a confusing mix of characters either relieving the glorious pre-revolutionary past or denying that such a past ever existed. The book is often sentimentalÄ"Fidel Castro knew how to make love to a woman without ever touching her." But the love letters, like much of the book, provide little insight into Castro's development and suggest only that even a hardened revolutionary can churn out banal but tender sentiment when smitten with a woman. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Cuba in this century is described through the lives of four generations of women in the Revuelta family. The central figure is Naty--born in 1925 and educated in America. As the wife of a prominent physician, she is every bit the social butterfly during the Batista years, until she becomes enamored of Fidel Castro and his ideas of revolution. What follows is a brief love affair, one that primarily takes place through a series of letters written in 1953-54, when Castro was in prison and published here for the first time. After Castro's release, Naty bore him a daughter, Alina, whom he never acknowledged to his family or publicly. Interwoven in this family saga is the history of Cuba as told from the viewpoint of these women who saw the changes in their country--the many hardships, deprivations, and restrictions Cubans experienced at the hands of Castro, as well as the passing of an era wherein being an aristocrat meant many privileges. Gimbel, whose own father was Cuban, tells a mesmerizing story, and she knows of what she speaks, which adds an authentic ring to her words. Anna Fields does an excellent job of reading Havana Dreams, changing voices to match her characters and speaking in fluid Spanish as the narration dictates. Recommended for all biography and Spanish collections, and larger public or academic libraries with social history sections.--Gloria Maxwell, Penn Valley Community Coll., Kansas City, MO (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A socialite. A revolutionary. A sour grandmother. Gimbel, a literary scholar turned freelance journalist, weaves these characters together with a few history lessons for an enjoyably dramatic family-based tale. Gimbel summered in Cuba as a child with her Cuban grandmother, until the revolution, when her relatives came to the US. Returning to the island in 1991, she realizes her own family's experience has become irrelevant. Instead, she focuses on the remains of another family, aristocrats before the revolution, who decided to stay. Gimbel's heroine, Naty Revuelta, is still fighting her disillusionment by the revolution she supported in the1950s. A restless housewife and the unofficial press agent to Fidel Castro during his failed raid on the Moncada barracks in 1953, Naty began a flirtatious correspondence with Castro while he was in prison. The love letters the two exchanged are included here. When Castro was released, they consummated their affair, but he quickly disappeared, leaving Naty and her husband with his baby. Soon after the revolution, Naty dismissed her husband in the futile hope that she would reunite with Castro. Naty's principal companion became her ancient mother. A woman who compared herself to Queen Elizabeth, Naty's mother, was never a supporter of the revolution. She had stayed in Havana simply because she couldnt think of living anywhere else. Anxious for guests who could appreciate her crystal and English china, Naty's mother had little but caustic remarks for her daughter. Telling the tale of a divorced friend, she noted, ``They didn't start agitating for a communist revolution, just because things were difficult.'' Naty and Fidel's daughter had no patience for the revolution either, and found her 15 minutes of fame as a high profile defector to the US. Describing life in a Havana plagued with shortages of electricity, meat, and gasoline, Gimbel rejects dogma to tell an intensely personal story about how the revolution changed everything. (6 photos) (First printing of 50,000; author tour)
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