Customer Reviews

Dancing to "Almendra": A Novel

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You know when you pick up a novel and read that the central character's initial thrust is an investigation into a hippopotamus murder in Havana which is linked to a Mafia rubout in New York and that character's main love is a one-armed circus assistant who is deeply in love with a man with leprosy who in turn turned out his own male Swedish lover after possibly infecting him....well, you've either got a turkey of a book or a terrific one. Fortunately, "Dancing to Almendra", a recent offering by author Mayra Montero, falls into the latter category. It is two hundred sixty pages of unadulterated joy.

Set in 1957 months before the overthrow of Cuba's Batista, Montero invents a host of people that are incomplete, to say the least. But this is not Scarsdale and the color that Montero provides through her descriptions of the men and women who dot her book are second only to a powerful and well-paced narrative. Montero brings out the best in these flawed people, as they simply try to hold their lives together. I must admit that the beginning of "Dancing to Almendra" flies by with characters too many to keep track of sometimes, but the good news is that this book gets better with each passing page. She paints a portrait of the last days of Cuba before Castro, and how accurate that portrait really is doesn't matter. It surely contains many elements of a free-wheeling Cuba in its last free-wheeling days, much to the nostalgia (and perhaps anger) of those who don't or can't live there today.

"Dancing to Almendra" is rich in every way. Too crazy for words perhaps is Montero, but she finds the words and then some. One would like to fly to Havana, sit back and have a couple of rums and read this wonderful book on its own turf. I highly recommend it along with thanks to the author for a much appreciated endeavor in writing it.

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We're suckers for novels that are set in Cuba during the "golden years." Havana in the 1950s was an exciting time, and in her new book, "Dancing to Almendra," Mayra Montero plunges us into Havana during the final weeks of Batista. The story begins with two deaths: the murder of mafia chieftain Umberto Anastasia and a hippopotamus at the Havana Zoo. A young entertainment reporter, Joaquín Porrata, gets assigned to the big story --the killing of the hippo.Porrata, who is definitely looking to move up in the journalism world, is a little under whelmed by his assignment -- until a zoo employee tells him about a strange link between the two killings.

The paper he works for refuses to publish his story, and Porrata soon finds himself working for a rival newspaper. What follows is a journey of discovery, from Havana to upstate New York and back again. Along the way, Porrata befriends a zoo keeper with a strange obsession for George Raft, Yolanda, a one-armed circus performer; and several shady mafia characters.

What is unique about this book is the counter story: Yolanda tells her own story in frequent interludes. On one side -- the present -- we have the plot driven and action packed narrative of Porrata. On the other, we have the slow meandering stream of Yolanda's life story, mostly remembrances of her past. Reading this book involves shifting from plainly written prose to stream-of-conscious poetry, but Montero manages to pull it off with aplomb.

The original Spanish text has been lovingly translated by Edith Grossman. If you speak and read Spanish, you might want to tackle the original. However, for English readers this novel is an engaging read. Yes, you won't want to put it down.

This opening line introduces a crime thriller that takes off at a gallop--a unique combination of dark actions and absurd, often humorous, commentary. Set in Havana in 1957, when Castro was still organizing his revolution in Oriente Province, and Mafia bosses Meyer Lansky and Santo Trafficante were sending suitcases full of money from their Havana gambling interests to Miami, the novel captures the last moments of Cuban high life, just before the revolution. Joaquin Porrada, a twenty-two year-old entertainment reporter, reads the teletype report of Mafia boss Anastasia's death in New York, and soon gets a tip that the gunshot death of the escaped Havana hippo was a belated warning to Anastasia from other Mafia dons--Anastasia was not being an "obedient hippopotamus."

Filled with period details of Cuban night life, Havana's American Mafia, the corrupt officials of Fulgencio Batista's ironman rule, and the lives of ordinary Cubans and their families during this turbulent period, the novel follows Joaquin as he investigates the deaths of the hippo and Anastasia and decides to report on them. To get at the truth, he visits strippers and prostitutes; covers the action at Trafficante's club; meets George Raft, who is host at the Capri; travels to New York to investigate the recent Apalachin meeting of mobsters; falls in love with a one-armed woman maimed during a performance of "magic"; and eventually is warned, beaten, and threatened with death.

Cuban author Mayra Montero's novel, ostensibly in the tradition of Cuban noir, is filled with broad humor, and the absurdities she highlights within the narrative provide a light, sometimes farcical, touch which keeps the reader amused, even as the blood is flowing. Joachin is hopelessly naïve at age twenty-two, but he is imaginative, and his fumbling attempts to investigate and write about crime in Havana do produce results, though not always the results he wants. Told alternately from his breezy point of view and that of Yolanda, his thirty-six-year-old, one-armed lover, who is also the mistress of Santo Trafficante, the novel is full of intrigue, overlapping characters, secret identities, and surprise twists.

The numerous characters, many of whom have two or three aliases, are sometimes hard to track, but the action is lively and entertaining. Montero's characterizations of Joachin, his friends and family, combined with the story of Yolanda and her life and family, are well drawn and intriguing, though they sometimes veer off and have little to do with the violence among the Mafia dons. Extravagant and sometimes over-the-top in its details, this exuberant novel is a fast read, full of fun. n Mary Whipple

What appears to be a complex plot involving underworld connections, magicians, and exotic animals in the glamorous and dangerous worlds of Miami, New York and Havana in the late 1950's, turns out to have very little substance in this crazy quilt of a novel. Joaquin, a 22-year old entertainment reporter for a Cuban newspaper gets involved with the mafia when he is sent to cover the story of a murdered hippopotamus at the Havana zoo. He learns that the capo, Umberto Anastasia, who he had seen at a local hotel as a child, has been gunned down in New York City. A zoo employee suggests to him that the killing of the hippo was intended as a "message" to Anastasia, a message that came too late.

Against all sense, Joaquin determines to turn his fluff assignment into real journalism by investigating this alleged connection, and predictably becomes a nuisance and a hazard to the powerful violent men fighting for control of Havana's flourishing casino operations. In the process he meets and falls in love with a one-armed circus performer whose bizarre back story is interwoven with current events in a somewhat baffling pattern.

Joaquin also discovers that his best friend's mother, Aurora, for whom he entertained an adolescent passion, is involved with the powerful Jewish underworld figure, Meyer Lansky. (This plot element stands out for its crystal clear purpose in a narrative full of ambiguities.) Lansky's presence in the story is always accompanied by his favorite Cuban dance, the "Almendra" of the title. His obsession with this particular song must mean something, but what that may be is totally lost on this American reader. I found a video performance of it on YouTube, but I am not enlightened. It isn't even an appealing tune to my ear, and if the words quoted in snatches throughout the Lansky sections have significance to the story, I am missing it.

I felt I was missing a lot while reading this book--the setting, for instance. Knowing nothing of Havana, the references to streets, rivers, forests and landmarks were pointless to me, and I got no real feel for the "place" of this novel, which should have been quite vivid since the setting is an important part of the story.

There are any number of quirky, potentially intriguing characters in Dancing to "Almendra" who could have been featured in novels of their own. Many of them served only to distract me, however, as their particular eccentricities and misadventures proved unimportant to the main story line.

Another reviewer called the translation of this novel "graceful", and for the most part I would agree. However, I did occasionally bump into an awkward expression, or a sentence that, while beautiful, held no meaning whatsoever. Take this one, for example: "She chewed as if they were real butterflies, with a concealed fury that was like a key to a puzzle." I don't know whether to blame that on the author or the translator, but it conveyed nothing to me.

Ultimately, I found Joaquin's story too insubstantial to support the trappings of grotesquerie and magical realism the author has buried it in.

I enjoyed this book in spite of some of its characters, who were unbelievable, at best. But the story fit into my mental picture of Havana in the last days before Castro-decaying from within, but still charming and slightly manic(which also describes some of the characters). Great writing, I liked the mixing of historic characters with fictional.

Living in Cuba in the 1950s, Joaquín Porrata is a young ambitious journalist investigating the murder of mob boss Umberto "Albert." Warned by the mob to stop his investigation, Joaquín finds himself endangering his life in order to do some "real news reporting." As he tries to discover what happened to Umberto "Albert" he becomes involved with Yolanda, a one-armed women who lets us peek into her strange and complicated life. When Joaquín 's brother is killed, he realizes how dangerous the situation has become.

"Dancing to Almendra" is an intriguing story, but is not well developed. At times, the story gets a bit confusing. It is difficult to keep track of the mob relationships. In addition, the author never explains what the dead hippo represents, and why the mob used it as the "message" to Alberto. Overall, I was disappointed. The characters have potential, but none were developed sufficiently to carry the story.

Although this has been translated from the Spanish, and I cannot be sure of the style of the original, it seems to be brilliantly written. It starts out as a simple story of a young man trying to be a reporter in the Cuba before Castro. He gets involved with the murder of the mafia boss Anastasia through a tip that the murder of a hippo in the zoo and the murder of Anastasia were related. He is a very weak and foolish sort of picaresque hero. He falls in love instantaneiously with an armless older woman whose son is a trapeze artist. She in turn is in love with a cabaret director and choreographer who has been disfigured by leprosy. Perhaps all these messed up people are symbolic of the decadence of pre-Castro Cuba. I certainly found the situations and relationships impossible to believe. Perhaps someone dared the author to make a novel out of hippos, the mafia and leprosy! It certainly is original.

There are many gratuitous ugly parts, like snot dripping from noses, descriptions of missing parts of leprosy victims, the smell of guts decaying in a dead hippopotamus, piles of chopped animals used for zoo food, etc.

I think the mystery of Anastasia's shooting at the Park Sheraton, and the simultaneous death of a hippo in the zoo would have made a funny story if the book were not so full of ineptitude, sadness, murder, bloodshed, frustration, tragedy etc. The writing is bright and sprightly and noir at the same time.

I really don't know what to make of it. I have no experience with true crime novels. This one is very interesting, and odd, and often disgusting, and sometimes touching, and very weird. I would be interested in anything else Montero has written, because of her pace, and her style, but I would only recommend this to those with a strong stomach and the willing suspension of disbelief. ( )

This is one of those novels which spans several genre's. It often has the feel of a crime novel, it qualifies as historical fiction, it has the exotic elements of several circus characters, and it is something of a coming of age novel. Taking place in Cuba just before Batista's fall, the actual historical characters and events are those of American gangsters, but it is not their lives that the novel is concerned with. The reader wishes the protagonist, a young reporter from an upper middle class family, well, but he is not all that likable; like the other characters, he is not really very nice.

Two things bothered me. Not withstanding the award won by the translator, I found the English occasionally jarring. I also found the revelations about the circus characters at the end to be something that felt "tacked on", rather than a satisfying conclusion. It is as if the author had a complex plot concept she never properly developed into its own novel. Still, given the novel's setting and feel , its prose which is sometimes very good, and its moderately interesting plot, I can recommend it.

Jim Lewis's review in the Sunday NYT caused me to buy this book. This novel also interested me since I spent some time in Havana around the time the book was set. Lewis states that he is "tired of gangster stories and wary of grotesques" but then went on the praise the novel to the skies. I found it to be a grotesque gangster story and not credible.

Thought she really captured the condition of Cuba of that time. Kept my interest all the way through. Excellent translation.