Customer Reviews

Cuba And The Night

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Pico Iyer's "Cuba and the Night" is the only realistic depiction of life in present-day Cuba that I have found written in English. Sure, the plot is a little weak on action. But this sameness serves as the perfect vehicle for conveying the muddle that is present-day Havana. The only "action" in Cuba is of the emotional and psychological variety.

I agree that there is an awkward reliance on the use of letters to impart the story throughout the book. But as one who has spent time in Cuba, I can affirm that MUCH of one's interrelation with those on the island occurs through letters. The occasional distorted phone call and two-month-delayed letter are of indescribable emotional significance--to both those "afuera," and those that remain in the land of Fidel.

Cuba haunts the mind and spurs the emotions; oftentimes most profoundly AFTER one has left the island--after one has left behind one's friends and lovers.

There are no car chases or shoot-outs in Cuba. But day-to-day life IS the psychological and emotional minefield that Iyer so deftly evokes. Cuba is a society unrestrained; both a heartbreaker and an addiction. And the romance, intrigue, mistrust and agitation that I once found so uncomfortable to accept as a reader indeed represent the REALITY of the place.

When I first read "Cuba and the Night," several years ago, I was immune to its charms (To put it mildly). But--having revisited the book after six uninterrupted months in Havana this year--I can only describe it as a perfect rendition of the place. I love Cuba. And I love the Cuban people. But NO ONE leaves the place with their innocence intact, and NO ONE of sensitivity leaves the island without being profoundly changed.

I only wish that I had accepted the book as reality before boarding that flight from Cancun to Havana eleven months--and what seems like a lifetime--ago.

This is a delightfully insightful look at life in communist Cuba and also a love story between an international photojournalist and a young Cuban woman. Told in the first person from the photographer's point of view, we slowly see the complexities of Cuban life unfold as he becomes more involved with this woman and her life in Cuba. The contrasts between the needs of men and women in relationships and capitalism and communism are well presented. Although written during the early 1990s, the portrayal of life in Cuba and the Cuban people is still valid.

I read this book many years ago when Cuba wasn't so much in the news and I must say that I have only the fondest memories of reading this passion packed novel. I felt every emotion whether happy or sad that the protagonists felt. It is a wonderful book that provides an accurate not exaggerated insight of how Cubans really live in Castro's Cuba. If you love the Cuban culture, its music and people, I recommend you read this novel. It will transport you to la Habana in seconds and it may even help you better understand the very sad and depressing Cuban phlight.

This book reads like one of those foriegn 'art' films where you follow people agonizing through everyday life but nothing much ever happens - you wait for hours for a flat, non-ending. Oh well, you got through it. Protagonist Richard is an adrenaline junkie global news photographer, who seems to feel deeply but never really gets past his hornmones or intellectualizing everything, including his 'love affair' with Lourdes. He is actually a very shallow person (sort of like an unfunny Seinfeld character - there is no humor in the book). It is a credit to Pico Iyer's talent that I could read this entire book and still think the trip was worth it, sort of. Nihilistic, full of angst and dreary images of life in Cuba of the early '90s.

What haunts me is the real implication of what the USA's 40-y embargo has wraught on the citizens of Cuba. Very Sad.

I've only been to Cuba once, a few years ago, but Pico Iyer's novel brought back to me the essence of that fantastic island and its marvelous citizen prisoners. If you were to read only two books before you make a trip yourself, read Cuba and the Night and Tom Miller's non-fiction Trading with the Enemy.

Exciting and well explored portrait of a culture not yet explored by myself. It leaves me wanting to add this land to the list of travel adventures. Insightful and fun.

Pico Iyer has been probably the finest travel writer of the past twenty years. 'Cuba dn the Night' is his first foray into fiction, but it has alot of the qualities of his best travel writing - the attention to evocative details and the emotional appeal of a sensitive but not infallible narrator confronting people and events beyond his control, if not - ultimately - his understanding. What Richard, Iyer's narrator, lacks is any ability to affect what happens to the people around him, some of whom he genuinely cares about. His voice is similar to the same passionate but hopelessly detached voice I first heard in Camus's 'L'Etranger.' And his final engineering of the rescue of Hugo and Lourdes, the two people who come closest to changing his own life (a life irreparably darkened by experince), is a kind of vicarious salvation for Richard - a photo-journalist doomed to experience life through an aperture. Iyer catches the flavor, the scent of a sequestered Cuba, that dared live out its own destiny without the solace of Coca-Cola or the dubious plenitude of plutocracy.

Having spent two years in Cuba recently, I found Mr. Iyers book very accurate in as much as his descriptions and dialogues were true to form. His portrayals of the people and their life are on the money. The plot of the story though took a while to develop if ever. But read this book if you want to fell what it's like for the Cuban people, and how they must constantly be looking over their shoulder, forget about whether the plot works.

It took me forever to finish this book. Being Cuban-American, I always gravitate toward fictional stories based in or about Cuba. This was no exception. It was set in the 80's, during the days of the Cold War and Reagan. The story is mostly narrated from the viewpoint of a journalistic photographer who travels the world following political issues and wars and whatnot. As you can predict, the formula is tried and true: the typical, can't-settle-down American photographer falls in love with the pretty Cuban girl.

The author actually weaves the story well but it just drags on... My husband told me to just give up on it but I actually was compelled to finish it, I just wasn't compelled to finish it quickly. It didn't help that the book really doesn't have chapters but rather long sections so it is hard to get to a good stopping point.

The book itself is not that big but for whatever reason, it took me several months to get through. I guess the reading just got tedious, not because of the language but because the main character just re-hashes his emotions and rationalizes everything. It gets old after a while. One more complaint - I never feel like I get to know any of the characters despite all the pages written focusing on them. Maybe that is the point... I don't know. I am just so middle of the road on whether or not I'd recommend this book so there you go... I guess I'm ambivalent.

A weakly plotted romantic story showcases Iyer's skills as a travel writer and demonstrates that writing travelogues and writing fiction are two different things.

The portraits of the Cubans and their night life are vibrant and sad and those of the foreigners, including the author's first person personae, are stereotypical. The foreigners do not seem to be fully conscious of nor appreciative of the risks their new Cuban friends area taking to associate with them.

The romance is so poorly drawn, we cannot tell why the writer loves (or is obsessed with) Lourdes. Once plans are made, the outcome is predictable.

The descriptions of Cuban night life, attitude and passion are wonderful. The text is shaded with poetry from Jose Marti, the ubiquitous sloganeering and talk of the ever-present Fidel. You can see the aging buildings and autos, you feel like you are waiting too. Without this color, it would be a three (or maybe two) star book.

For a better Cuban travelogue, with a real love story, I recommend Es Cuba: Life and Love on an Illegal Island. For pure descriptions of Cuba, and for a once over lightly of its recent history, I recommend The Boys from Dolores: Fidel Castro's Schoolmates from Revolution to Exile (Vintage Departures).