Lazarus Rumba - Hardcover

Mestre-Reed, Ernesto

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312199074 ISBN 13: 9780312199074

Publisher: Picador USA, 1999

Synopsis

A debut novel set in Cuba following Castro's revolutionary upheaval describes a country confused and dislocated through the eyes of three generations of women in the Lucientes family. 15,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Ernesto Mestre was born in Guantanamo, Cuba in 1964. His family emigrated to Madrid, Spain in 1972, and later that year to Miami, Florida. He graduated from Tulane University with a B.A. in English Literature and currently lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Reviews

The intent of Mestre's first novel appears to be no less than to forge the uncreated conscience of his homeland, Cuba, an undertaking that even Joyce put off for his second book. The result is an imposing novel attempting to combine the fantastical bent of Garc!a M rquez with the political intentions of Kundera, and if Mestre's does not quite pull it off, his feverish, often baroque tale has undeniable power. Divided into three parts, this elaborate debut intertwines the stories of more than a dozen charactersAamong them a three-eyed, bisexual acrobat; a young widow who becomes a famous political dissident; a demonic circus performer with a penchant for young boys; a tolerant priest and a mute roosterAas they experience the rush and aftermath of Castro's revolution. Evidence of Mestre's prodigious imagination is ubiquitousAin his unusual characters, in the many subplots, twists, turns and transformations (after inventing a powerful guava-based aphrodisiac, one character turns into a river fish and is promptly eaten by his cat), in the onion layering of folklore within tales within stories. His prose has an uncommon exuberance that captures the lushness of his tropical setting. However, this vibrancy often gives way to ornate embellishment that can impede the momentum of the loosely structured plot, and the novel's big movements become obscured by its convoluted details. If Mestre still lacks the technical control and the balance between realism and fantasy that characterizes the best magical realists, the fecundity and ambitious scope of his work suggests that he may become a talent to watch. Agent, Harold Schmidt. (June) FYI: Mestre was born in Cuba and now lives in New York City.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The enormous influence of Gabriel Garca M rquezs One Hundred Years of Solitude on Latin American literature bears its finest fruit so far in this stunning exploration of the Castro Revolutions roots, character, and consequences. In a dizzyingly complex narrative that traces more than 50 fully realized characters, Mestre, a Cuban-born writer living in the US, concentrates on three: Alicia Lucientes, whose wealthy family falls under suspicion of betraying Revolutionary principles; her husband Julio Cesar Cruz, a former Castro guerrillero falsely accused of counter-revolutionary activity and executed; and a passionate young leftist named Joshua, who is reputedly Castros illegitimate son and whose visionary dream of the republic of the Newer Man is realized with horrific irony. Other important figures include Hector Daluz (Alicias cousin), a circus acrobat whose body bears the physical marks of his incestuous love for his twin brother Juanito; Father Gonzalo, a priest whose life is fatefully entwined with that of the Lucientes family; female revolutionary La Vieja and gluttonous, vindictive police captain El Rubio; even a famed fighting cock named Atila and El Rubios monstrous mastiff Thomas del Aquino (creatures respectively embodying Cuban machismo and that degeneration from man to beast by which the Revolutions lofty egalitarian principles are repeatedly compromised). Theres even an apparent authorial surrogate: the pediatrician Mestre charged and convicted of sixteen counterrevolutionary crimes that include his unaccented fluidity in [sic] the English language . . . and his arrogant and gross display of his medical degree from the yanqui University of Chicago. Seldom has the folly of utopian dreaming been dramatized with such fine frenzied ingenuity. Mestres overall theme and thrust may feel familiar (in addition to Garca M rquezs, the presence of Isabel Allendes The House of the Spirits lies behind it), but his gifts for hyperbolic, though intensely realistic, character creation and brilliant narrative momentum are his own. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Cuban-born Mestre's magnificent first novelAwhich hardly reads like a debutAis a tightly woven epic covering 30 years of Cuban history, from the 1950s through the 1970s. The novel centers on the counterrevolutionary dissident Alicia Lucientes and her gay cousin H?ctor, the generations before and after them, and the various convoluted relationships of their extended families. Elements of magic realism abound, from Atila, a fighting rooster subject to migraines, to giant rats baptized with biblical names; from spiders to Santer!a. Mestre gives credit to The Arabian Nights in his storytelling style; his episodic voices alternate between the vibrant and the ghostly, the gentle and the gross. For all collections of Hispanic literature.AMary Margaret Benson, Linfield Coll. Lib., McMinnville, OR
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Picador USA
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312199074
• ISBN 13: 9780312199074
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 486