Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A STUNNING DEBUT NOVEL..., 21 Mar 2007
This is a beautifully written novel that held me spellbound. It is simply one of the best books that I have read. Rich in its imagery and evocative of a time gone by, the author paints a vivid picture of the Cuban experience, both before and after Fidel Castro's revolution. Steeped in nostalgia, the experience is seen through the eyes of two young cousins, Nora and Alicia, daughters of privileges in pre-Castro Cuba. Their story begins in 1956.
Nora and Alicia are just coming of age and enjoying all the benefits of a pampered lifestyle, when the world around them begins to shift, as the rise of Castro causes Cuba to irrevocably change. Alicia stays in Cuba with her family, as Alicia's father believes that Castro's story will be one of here today, gone tomorrow. Nora's father, on the other hand, feels the need to flee Castro's Cuba. Thus, the cousins are parted, as Nora escapes to the United Stated with her family, exiled from her beloved island.
What happens to Nora and Alicia is seen through a series of letters exchanged by the cousins over time. Nora struggles to fit into her new life in the United States, a stranger in a strange land, while Alicia tries to cope with the extreme hardships and problems presented by Fidel Castro's vision for Cuba. What happens to both is heartbreaking, and the author paints an indelible portrait of their lives for the reader, handling the thematically profound nuances of their story with elegance and grace.
This is simply a stunning debut novel that will keep readers riveted, bringing tears to the eyes of its readers, so moving is the story contained within the pages of this book. Richly textured and beautifully realized, this novel about love and redemption is a testament to the endurance of the human spirit. The author lovingly and masterfully captures the essence of being Cuban and, as I am a Cuban-American, this book spoke to me and reached a place in my heart that had long been dormant. This is a novel that will long be remembered and one that should be read by those who love great books. Those who enjoyed reading the "The Kite Runner" will especially enjoy this book. Bravo!
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4.0 out of 5 stars
A must-read, 1 Sep 2008
Also released under the title 'Ghost Heart', this wonderfully moving tale is of two cousins, Alicia and Nora, growing up in Cuba in the fifties, coming of age during Castro's revolution, of one fleeing Cuba for America with her family, while the other remains behind with hers. We follow the lives of these two girls from childhood to adulthood on a journey both humourous and heartrending in the hands of this consummate storyteller.
I fell in love with the Cuba of Alicia's and Nora's childhood and found myself longing to be there, lying daydreaming under the royal palms and swimming in the warm waters of the Caribbean. I can't think when last I read a book that made me want to be part of its time and place as much; so to feel the collective heart break of Cuba's people at their country's transformation before their eyes from one of rich, middle-class and poor (imperfect as is every other country in the world), to one where everyone was dragged into impoverishment and starvation, as Castro brought equality to all, was that much more poignant. It was disturbing to see Cubans become outsiders in their own country, banned from their beautiful beaches and other place which the new order of communism designated the preserve of tourists.
This story is about those things that define the human spirit, but more than anything it's about hope and what becomes of the human spirit when hope is lost. It seems to me there was a time when much of the world knew something of what idyllic moments in life were. What Cuba lost through Castro's revolution, the Western world, I believe, eventually lost through modern technology and our rush into a life of material excesses at odds with the needs of our soul. Read this book. You'll thank yourself for it.
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
'Fear doesn't float...But courage ...not only floats, it flies.', 9 Mar 2007
Cecilia Samartin blooms in the garden of new novelists as a rare and exotic species of flower, a gifted artist whose talent is mature, making it difficult to believe that BROKEN PARADISE is a first novel. Samartin bears watching: she seems to have the gifts of such authors as Isabel Allende and Carlos Eire among others - very fine company for any writer.
Samartin offers a story of two cousins - Nora and Alicia - who were born into status and money in Cuba during the Batista years, witnessed the Revolution led by Fidel Castro, and suffered the ultimate results of the changes that revolution brought to the citizens of Cuba: Nora, the pragmatic one, escaped to the USA to live in Los Angeles with her parents while Alicia, the beautiful one, stayed behind, falling in love with a revolutionary black man Tony whom she married and gave birth to a blind child Lucinda, caring for her daughter after Tony's disillusionment with the revolution lead to his imprisonment. The two cousins continue their bonded relationship via letters and through these letters we are able to visualize the gradual crumbling of life and sustenance in Havana, the extremes to which the ever-optimistic Alicia must submit in order to maintain life, and the manner in which the two cousins reunite in Cuba years later, a time when the conditions of the current life in Cuba sadly separate them forever.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez once wrote 'Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it': Samartin's gift is the ability to invite us into the lives of her characters and allows us to create our own memories of what we have been told. Samartin's writing style is a dichotomy of tone. When she is telling the lives of the girls and their wondrously colorful families and extended families caught up in the paradise that was Cuba, her language is apropos to the tenor and rhythm and illusion of life as a child speaks it. When the Revolution changes (or 'breaks') the paradise, the maturing girls speak with the reality of adults, able to perceive the realities of the changed land and psyches of the people. This movement from the child's voice to the adult's narration is subtle but secure and adds enormously to the credibility of the novel's flow. 'Some people sell their bodies and others sell their souls' Nora tacitly observes as she returns to her beloved Cuba of the past to care for Alicia now fading from disease (presumably AIDS) she contracted in her only way of providing money for her imprisoned husband and blind child. The needs for sustaining life meet the needs for preserving soul and it is this pungent message that Samartin weaves through her novel.
No matter what version of the 'change' in Cuba each reader may own, Cecilia Samartin invites us to revisit a paradise broken by a hopeful change from the Batista reign into the Castro communism. She paints her version with words in a way few authors can or have: Cuba is her native home, Los Angeles her adopted one. She is a very bright light beginning to glow in the literary world and we can only hope she is already at work on her next novel! Highly recommended. Grady Harp
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