Ruins by Achy Obejas is a beautifully written novel, an incredibly humanistic portrayal of one man’s life in Cuba. Born before the Cuban revolution, and named after the U.S. Navy ships his mother can see from shore close to Guantanamo (a U.S. base already there since 1898), Usnavy is destined to live a life under shadow of the United States, both its lure and its warning.  He never waivers from being a true believer in Cuba, and in all that Che Guevara promised the revolution would bring for the downtrodden of Cuba, but present times are testing his faith.  Set in 1994, Usnavy reveals details of his life before the revolution, a life of degradation and hopelessness.  His consequent embracing of the Revolution makes perfect sense:  “It was because of the Revolution..that he could participate as a responsible member of society, as good as anyone else.  It was because of the Revolution, he believed, that he wasn’t dismissed as some hick from the hills.  It was because of the Revolution that the lifeline on his hand had been rerouted, that he was born every day a New Man.”

But Usnavy’s life is very hard. He works every day at a bodega, fulfilling the ration cards of the people who line up for goods: “soap was scarce, coffee rare; no one could remember the last time there was meat.  Sometimes all he had was rice, or worse, those detestable peas used to supplement beans, or when ground up, used as a coffee substitute.”  He lives in one room with his beloved wife and daughter, a room without windows and with a floor always wet with leaks. The communal bathroom of the tenement is found by the swarm of flies that envelop it, and with every rainfall the danger of the entire building collapsing threatens. Every day more and more Cubans take to the sea, escaping to America.  When good friends leave, Usnavy becomes fearful that his own daughter will be next, drawn by the good fortunes of those who made it the ninety miles across the sea, and repelled by her father’s own “salao”, bad luck.

Usnavy owns a magnificent lamp, huge and glowing with varied colors of light from its many panels of decorative glass. Left to him as the only legacy from his mother, the lamp reminds Usnavy of all that is beautiful and possible in his world, and it connects him to the past, his mother and his Jamaican father (long ago disappeared at sea).  But one day Usnavy makes a discovery that connects him and his lamp to the history of Cuba itself.  Keeping the lamp and himself whole becomes a parable for the future of Cuba as Che dreamed of it: will the need for dollars overwhelm Usnavy or will the lifeblood of the lamp sustain him in his faith?

There are both incredible and quiet details in Ruins about daily life in Cuba: his daughter’s dinner of a meat sandwich but it is only wool marinated in spices, “the texture of the wool had been transformed into what they all imagined steak was like, something tender and chewy”; Usnavy’s three pairs of underwear, one to wear, one to wash while bathing, and one to keep ironed and folded in his small drawer; Usnavy’s nightly domino games with his friends in the plaza; the constant shadow of the U.S., both in Cuban history (Hemingway and the U.S. love affair with everything Cuban), in products (the best appliances are U.S. made), and in politics (the embargo, of course, as well as the 1994 invasion of Haiti by the U.S.); young girls in lycra plying the streets at night for tourist dollars; outdoor dances and government parades; Socialist Committee-sponsored abuse of those Cubans waiting in line for visas to America; the constant gnaw of hunger; and Usnavy’s long bike rides  through the streets of Havana.

These details, woven around a compelling and surprising plot, make for a beautiful book. But this is much more than a great historical mystery set in Cuba or the compelling story of one man’s spiritual conflict: this is a book that exposes the sufferings of the Cuban people, both before and after the Revolution.  No matter what your politics, the book underscores both the brutality of life before Che and Castro (no romanticizing of the period when the Upper Classes lived like royalty and the lower classes were kept down like animals), and the sufferings and deprivations of life under Castro.  Only misery and complete loss of hope could drive people numbering in the thousands to take to the sea in less than seaworthy crafts, braving ninety miles of  sharks and storms, just to get away from Cuba.

Usnavy will never leave: he is in love with his country, bound up with its history, proud of its revolutionaries, and still holding hope for its future.  Despite all that he suffers, we understand his attachment, it all makes sense as part and parcel of the man Obejas has created for us.  Usnavy is a good man, he shares what little he has: “that was his way; whatever was available was for everyone equally.  That was what he knew and understood.”  He is a quiet man with pleasure found in the riding of his bike, the playing of dominoes, watching the sea at night, and hearing the breathing of his wife and daughter while they sleep. He is the last man we would ever want to see hardened or bitter: his faith is too true, his needs so minimal, his efforts so sincere.  He desires only to “die old and contented…in the soft dapple of a primal Antillean night.”

This novel is an incredible affirmation of life and of the power of the survival instinct.  We want Usnavy to find refuge from suffering and loss, and we fervently hope that he never sees himself betrayed by his Revolution but that he lives contented in a dream of it; that the huge lamp survives, its history and its power intact.

Reviewed by Nina Sankovitch on readallday.org

Published by Akashic Books - paperback - 978-1933354699 - $15.95

A shared love for a particular novel can bridge the most surprising social gaps

“Novels aren’t just sources of solitary cogitation. They are social objects, and we use them to brandish our identities, mark our allegiances and broker our relationships. They can provoke passions as strongly as politics. Thanks to the intimate connection between story and reader, they impact upon us very personally, and can drive otherwise undemonstrative folk to feel they have a right–nay duty–to confront complete strangers with their zeal, and have thus been responsible for some of the most unexpected human encounters I’ve had.”–Molly Flatt, from her piece, “Bonding with Books,” in the Guardian’s Books Blog.

I devoured Alice Fantastic by Maggie Estep. I sat down and read it and did not get  up for anything. This book is great. Estep’s charming and down-dirty story about lucky and plucky Alice, her clumsy sister Eloise, and their dog-rescuing, ex-junkie mother, presents the hilarious and sometimes heartbreaking ways people intertwine, overlap and just plain run over each other in the acts of love, friendship, sex, and gambling — and all other acts of resistance.

This book is wonderful because of its fabulous characters and delicious plot, all sprung from Estep’s original and uninhibited mind.  The people of this novel are maybe not wholly believable but I took them as mythical members of the wild and crazy New York universe and went willingly along on the spin-of-the-wheel ride of their lives.  Free will — and these women are wilful — meets those little flips of fate that round out into destiny, or sometimes just a one-night stand. The struggle facing our characters is the age-old mandate to connect (”just connect”) and the obstacles they face are the tried and true Guilt, Pleasure, and Duty.

The characters didn’t need the catalyst of the mother’s big secret to get moving.  They are never static and their movement brings change: forward marching, then retracting, then forward again, they  lurch on, rapacious and certain, then stop, regroup, become subdued and questioning.  All three of them face their own crisis of the heart and confrontation of the soul.  We admire them (I loved them) for being forced to look into the mirror and reacting so very honestly to what they see.

Estep is adept with words.  Her sisters and their mother are each narrator of different chapters and they all speak with distinct cadences and linguistic choices: we know them as well as by their rhythms and words as by their actions. Estep’s physical descriptions are right on and perfect: “The sky over Aqueduct was the color of dead television.”  She is often hilarious: “Her eyes were bright and her big curly hair had, I swear, gotten bigger and curlier.  She was verging on looking like Malcolm Gladwell.”  Estep can write great one liners, real Oscar Wilde zingers, like my favorite: “She has led an unconventional life and it has agreed with her.”  I wouldn’t mind that as my epitaph.

Read this great book about sisters and mothers and friends and lovers, and sex, dogs, food, and gambling.  It will leave you reaching out and grabbing hold of someone or some dog or some idea.  You’ll bake yourself a cake with white icing, you’ll commit to skinny dipping at least once a summer, and you’ll never, ever bet on a race unless you’ve done the homework.  Alice Fantastic will inspire you to take the gamble of your life and run with it.

Reviewed by Nina Sankovitch on readallday.org

Published by Akashic Books - paperback  -978-1933354811 - $15.95

Miriam Gershow’s debut novel, The Local News, is an excellent story narrated by 15 year old Lydia Pasternak, whose older brother Danny has mysteriously gone missing after shooting hoops with a couple of friends at the local elementary school.

Lydia doesn’t exactly miss her brother right away.  Her feelings are complicated.  Danny and his football playing friends spent years picking on her and calling her names, but he’s still her brother, and she has good memories from when they were little kids.  Danny, athletic and loud, took up a lot of space in the family, and his absence in their lives is huge.

Her parents are disconnected, drifting through the days in anguished grief.  They are hyper focused on finding their child- “Not you,” she tells herself; “their other child.”  Lydia feels forgotten at home.  It’s the opposite at school- everyone knows who she is. Even the most popular kids, the ones who never gave her the time of day before, suddenly want to know how she’s doing; what’s new with the investigation.  At times it seems she is who she is only in relation to her brother.

Lydia has a nerdy friend, David, with whom she talks about world politics and other brainy topics.  David is her only friend who is all hers- completely independent of her brother.  She is comfortable with David until his attraction for her becomes obvious, and they drift apart as things get awkward between them.  She then starts hanging around with cheery Lola Pepper, an admirer of her brother and captain of the flag team, falling into the party scene Danny vacated.

The Pasternaks hire a private investigator when the local police hit a wall with the case.  Lydia develops a crush on the PI and finds herself focused and energized; organizing and analyzing letters from strangers, looking for possible clues, going over mug shots, taking notes.  When the PI has exhausted most of the leads, he turns a suspicious eye on Lydia, freaking her out and turning her off.

I loved this book and couldn’t put it down.  Gershow nailed Lydia’s complex adolescent voice.  It reminded me of Melinda’s voice in Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson.  She’s smart, wry, sad, funny, damaged, and heartbreakingly real.  I ached for Lydia, especially as she lay awake night after night listening to the silence in the next room, her brother’s bedroom.  I cried at one bittersweet interaction with her dad, when “for the first time in a long time, I remembered a little bit that he loved me, so I loved him a little bit back.”   And the end.. well, the end tore me up.

The book is reminiscent of The Lovely Bones, from the title to the cover (the same blue) to the subject matter.  In both we have families that are disintegrating over a missing loved one.  And I also thought about Songs for the Missing by Stewart O’Nan, a book with a similar story about the disappearance of a teen.  But I preferred The Local News to both those books.  The Local News is Lydia’s story and told from her perspective alone, while the others are told from several perspectives, including the missing teen.  I thought the single narration was a more effective, less diluted way to tell the story.  But the main reason I preferred The Local News is because at the end we get to see Lydia as an adult and understand how the loss of her brother continues to affect her relationships years later.  In the wake of Danny’s disappearance, life has been forever altered.

Sharp, raw, and brilliantly written, this is a powerful book and one I can highly recommend.

Reviewed by Lisa Munley on her excellent blog Books on the Brain.

Published by Spiegel & Grau in hardcover - 978-0385527613 - $24.95