Review by Booklist Review
Guerra (Revolution Sunday, 2018) lets her protagonist, Nadia, loose in a multilayered novel that reads as though one has dug into a box of memories found in an attic. Cuban American author and translator Achy Obejas valiantly takes on this nonlinear, nonchronological work in which Guerra creates a panoply of narrative styles, from straightforward prose to letters, poetry, and transcripts of taped diaries, radio plays, and TV interviews. Radio host and artist Nadia is a granddaughter of the Cuban Revolution. Born into a bohemian milieu of artists and raised by her famous film director dad and his gay partner, Nadia sets out to search for her mother, her vocation, and her place in the world. Nadia's quest takes her from Havana to Paris to Moscow to Miami and back, as she creates art and engages in love affairs. Along the way, she discovers the story of Celia Sánchez, a hero of the Cuban Revolution subtly alluded to in the title. Nadia's, her mother's, and Celia's stories provide fascinating insights into the female dimension of an infamously macho revolution.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Cuban writer Guerra (Revolution Sunday) gives readers a revelatory tale of the Cuban Revolution's impact on a family. In 2005, artist Nadia Guerra, 35, reflects on communist Cuba ("My most heroic acts are simple: to survive on this island, to avoid suicide, to deal with the guilt"). Her parents are intimately connected to the 1950s revolution and its icons; her mother, poet Albis Torres, was close to the late Celia Sanchez, reputed to be Fidel Castro's lover, and her filmmaker father achieved success in the 1960s. Albis left when Nadia was 10; raised by her father, Nadia believed in the revolution's ideals of a better life. Now, Nadia chafes against censorship and starts to question the identity of her biological father. She earns a Guggenheim grant to make sculptures in France, and uses the money to search for her mother. Nadia finds Albis in Russia, and brings her back to Havana. Along the way, Guerra switches from Nadia's nonlinear account to Albis's voice via letters describing her youth and close friendship with Celia. The former can be difficult to follow, but Guerra holds the reader's attention by evoking Cuba's political tempest in Havana's humid, salty air. It adds up to an effectively moody, intimate story. Agent: Thomas Colchie, Colchie Agency. (Sept.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Dismissed by the Cuban government from hosting her controversial radio talk show, Nadia Guerra (who shares the author's surname) embarks on a quest to find her mother, who abandoned her as a child. Gathering information from her mother's numerous contacts, Nadia locates her in Russia and later arranges her return to Cuba, where the senile and discouraged woman dies by suicide. After discovering among her mother's effects a partial draft of a biographical novel about Celia Sánchez ("First Lady"), the famous revolutionary who was Castro's rumored lover, Nadia is determined to finish the novel as a tribute to both her mother and Celia. To fulfill her goal and add veracity to her mother's book, Nadia interviews Celia's sister and Castro's only daughter. Guerra (Revolution Sunday) develops this meandering storyline unconventionally, with a range of mixed formats like Nadia's diary, email chains, and transcripts of tape recordings and radio broadcasts. VERDICT Except for Castro, Sánchez, and Che Guevara, the historical names that populate these pages will probably be unfamiliar to most American readers. Nevertheless, readers will get a peek at everyday life in Cuba after 60 years under Castro, but (like Cubans themselves) can only speculate about the country's future, as the novel concludes with Castro's death.--Lawrence Olszewski, formerly with OCLC
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
What begins as one fictional Cuban woman's examination of her personal life expands into a broader, deeper consideration of what it means to be Cuban, both for those who left since Castro took power and for those who stayed. Not coincidentally, Nadia, the protagonist, shares the author's last name, and, as in Guerra's earlier coming-of-age novel, Everybody Leaves (2012), the similarities between author and character feel purposeful: They're both diarists with careers in the arts, both have parents who were also artists in post-revolutionary Cuba. As the novel opens, Nadia is searching both psychologically and physically for her mother, who deserted Cuba in 1980, leaving behind her husband and 10-year-old daughter for reasons Nadia has never fully known. Thanks to a grant for artists, Nadia travels to Europe, where she receives contradictory information from her mother's former friends and lovers. Readers begin to see Nadia's unnamed mother as a stand-in for Cuba: deeply flawed yet adored at her peak, now in failing health and living in Russia. Nadia decides to care for her mother and has her brought back to Havana, where she arrives with pages of writing related to a novel that was never published because it was deemed politically dangerous back in 1980--not unlike Guerra's mother Albis Torres' own poetry. Nadia's endlessly solipsistic observations have been dominating the narration, but now the tone shifts to her mother's cleareyed mini history lesson about the revolution via fragmented notes about her privileged girlhood in late 1950s Cuba, her adoring platonic relationship with Che, and her mentorship by historical figure Celia Sánchez, lovingly presented here as an altruistic saint, the most important woman in the revolution, and Fidel's closest confidante. A third tonal shift occurs as Nadia reports on a visit to Miami, where exiles consider their reassembled version of Cuba more authentic than the Cuba where Nadia chooses to remain despite dramatic changes over the next decade. Guerra's novel is a grand if bittersweet valentine to Cuba, and maybe her mother. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
