Customer Reviews

Adios Hemingway

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I would definitely recommend this book, especially to serious Hemingway fans. The author has clearly done his homework, researching all the locations, interesting details and characters for this book. It was a great mix of fact and fiction and was written in a way that makes you feel like maybe, just maybe, it did happen. I particularly liked the way that the story is told in alternating chapters, from both Hemingway's and Mario Conde's perspectives. Each had a unique voice and attitude. This is a good, quick read. Pick it up and enjoy on the beach, with a nice rum drink, a la Hemingway!

Quite an enjoyable read! The atmosphere of Cuba during the 50's before the revolution and at the start of Hemingway's decline make this novel a treat. The author's writing captures Hemingway's style with short declarative sentences emphasizing what's not actually written and allowing the reader to fill-in the blanks. A wonderful police procedural similar to Andrea Camilleri's Montalbano series and Garcia-Roza's Inspector Espinosa mysteries. The novel does such an excellent job of bringing Hemingway's time in Cuba to life, I feel that I've actually seen Ava Gardner's black-lace panties. Read the book!

The Cuban atmospherics and the Hemingwayesque mixture of facts and myths make for a quick uncomplicated mystery. Who would not want to know how Ava Gardner's black panties found their way into this tale? Or, would you not want to entertain a reason
why Papa hurriedly left the island to find his way to suicide in Ketchum, Idaho? Read it as fiction, enjoy it and let your mind wander to the possibilities.

Murder mysteries are generally not my cup of tea, but this strong, evocative novel by Leonardo Padura Fuentes is a wonderful find. An honestly rendered story set in the last days of the Batista era in Cuba, the relatively short book - just 240 pages - has a genuinely timeless quality simply because Fuentes does not try to recreate a country on the brink of revolution. Instead he re-imagines a larger-than-life literary figure, Ernest Hemingway, within the context of a complex murder case that my implicate the author.

The protagonist is former policeman Mario Conde, who has become a private detective where there is ironically no privacy. There is a skeleton found entwined in the root structure of an ancient mango tree that is of course, on the writer's former property outside Havana. Hemingway's connections with Cuba are well known, so Fuentes takes full advantage of this historical reality within the narrative and adds some political intrigue showing that the skeleton is that of a vanished FBI agent. This dimension brings an almost-"Chinatown" like sense of duplicity and identity crisis that brings Conde to task by his own government.

Fuentes dexterously interweaves chapters about the murder investigation with others narrated from Hemingway's perspective. He accurately mimics the legend's testosterone-heavy writing style just short of parody, as the details of the fateful night in October 1958 unfold. Throughout, Hemingway is portrayed as arrogant, alcoholic, and self-centered to the point of paranoia and driven by a need to violate all moral codes at first encounter. Implicating the master author in the murder provides fascinating albeit fictionalized insight into what led the author to suicide shortly thereafter.

This is a sharp, thoughtful and sometimes funny thriller that maintains its suspense consistently but never at the expense of character development or its specific historical setting at least until the lyrical ending. John King has done a mostly admirable job in translating Fuentes' original Spanish text by ensuring the gently evocative and subtly ironic tone remains intact.

I was disappointed, when I finished this lovely book, to see that there are no other novels in the Conde series that have been translated into English. This book is delightfully sophisticated, with sympathetic yet complex characters and an amusing light touch. It is just the sort of work that would have a wide readership among mystery cognoscenti if sufficiently publicized. Please bring on the rest!

This mystery novel by a popular Cuban writer involves a dead body discovered on Hemingway's property (Finca Vigia) in Cuba. The hero, a retired police inspector, had once been a Hemingway fan but has become disillusioned about the famous writer for various reasons. The novel proceeds somewhat ploddingly as the inspector has to be persuaded to take the case; he then wanders around visting his old "colorful' friends and finally makes it to the Villa itself (now a museum. The novel takes place in the present. The body, recently exhumed, has been in the ground many years. Hemingway himself is presented in flashbacks). Even though he has been dead these many years, Hemingway becomes a suspect in the killing. The novel wanders to an end and features an amusing take on Ava Gardner's "knickers."
It's hard to tell if the novel is well written because the translation is execrable. One sample: "He went to the bathroom adjoining his bedroom and opened his flies." I gave it three stars because I am a Hemingway fan and the passages describing the great writer's last days in Cuba, his health problems , his relations with the natives were of interest.

I had no expectations for this book. I was taking a chance, having an interest in Cuba and mysteries. The book is very engaging; it grabbed me from the first page, and my interest and appreciation increased with every page. Now I am anxious to read more by Padura Fuentes. It is a good story, very well told. Padura Fuentes is an exceptionally talented writer, and the English translation, in my view, is excellent. Contrary to other reviews, I don't think you have to be a Hemingway fan to appreciate this; I'm not. But I did learn a lot that was interesting about Hemingway. Both he and Conde, the fictional detective at the heart of this story, are complicated characters, with lots of faults but some admirable qualities.

There's no hiding Padura's actual affection for Hemingway. This is a work in which one terrific writer pays his respects to another. As a work of historical fiction it becomes clear that every scene, every word Padura presents us with is absolutely plausible. Padura really nails in in describing both the trajectory of Papa's life and relationships as well as the evolving relationship between the U.S. government and Cuba. On a visit there in the early eighties I found a widespread, genuine respect for the literature of Hemingway (as well as many others). If the U.S. ever honors our right to go there I recommend checking out the Hemingway public library as well as Hemingway's preserved and well maintained finca (farm). This book will fuel your desire for a road trip south...to Habana!

Not having read any Cuban fiction, I gave this a try.

It took me in, not only to Cuban life (for which I craved more description) but to the Hemingway portrait. It's been years since I've read a Hemingway novel or a bio. (although I read one on Hadley last year that was very kind to him). The portrait that is presented (through a clever weaving of past and present) is plausible to the mystery and to the man himself.

Credit must be given to the translator, as well as a very creative author. Like a previous Amazon reviewer, I'd like to read more of this author.

This is the first book I've read by Fuentes. It's short, quite delightful but, as the writer explains in the foreward, more about Hemingway in his last days in Cuba than a detective story. I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more had this not been the first time I'm reading Fuentes.