Loving Che: A Novel - Softcover

Menéndez, Ana

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802141749 ISBN 13: 9780802141743

Publisher: Grove Press, 2004

Synopsis

A young Cuban woman has been searching in vain for details of her birth mother. All she knows of her past is that her grandfather fled the turbulent Havana of the 1960s for Miami with her in tow, and that pinned to her sweater-possibly by her mother-were a few treasured lines of a Pablo Neruda poem. These facts remain her only tenuous links to her history, until a mysterious parcel arrives in the mail. Inside the soft, worn box are layers of writings and photographs. Fitting these pieces together with insights she gleans from several trips back to Havana, the daughter reconstructs a life of her mother, her youthful affair with the dashing, charismatic Che Guevara and the child she bore by the enigmatic rebel. Loving Che is a brilliant recapturing of revolutionary Cuba, the changing social mores, the hopes and disappointments, the excitement and terror of the times. It is also an erotic fantasy, a glimpse into the private life of a mythic public figure, and an exquisitely crafted meditation on memory, history, and storytelling. Finally, Loving Che is a triumphant unveiling of how the stories we tell about others ultimately become the story of ourselves.

About this title

About the Author

Ana Menendez is the daughter of Cuban exiles who fled to Los Angeles in the 1960s before settling in Miami in the 1980s. Loving Che is her first novel and has been translated into eleven languages. Her story collection In Cuba I Was a German Shepherd has also been translated into eleven languages. She lives in Miami Beach.

From AudioFile

When a young woman from Miami goes in search of the mother she never met, she receives an anonymous package with old letters and paintings that tell the story of a passionate woman who had an affair with Che Guevara. The daughter's voice is read in a tone filled with longing; she drops her voice at appropriate points to accentuate secrets being whispered and mysteries being pondered. The mother's letters are read in an older, loving tone filled with sadness and poetry. The side-endings are not always appropriate, like the middle of a young boy yelling, interupting the flow of the narration. J.F.M. © AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

About this edition

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0802141749
• ISBN 13: 9780802141743
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240