Customer Reviews

Empress of the Splendid Season

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(10)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Oscar Hijuelos again creates an achingly poignant tale of the myriad joys and sorrows encountered in "ordinary" lives. Wonderfully evocative of New York City throughout the fifties, sixties and early seventies, the story follows the life of Lydia Colon, banished as a teen from her well-to-do family in Cuba by her father, irate over an amorous episode, and tossed into circumstances she considers below her standing. Her young husband's frail health forces her to take a position cleaning the homes of affluent New Yorkers, and brings her painfully close to lives of priviledge and plenty as she herself once felt destined to have. The author captures the fatigue and frustration of lives dimmed by resignation and ill fortune and yet never misses the sometimes brief, but meaningful and mysterious instances when happiness and comfort appear. As in Hijuelos' other works, also addressed are the issues of what it is to be Cuban, how to preserve that identity, and how to pass it along to generations entirely removed from an increasingly mythical island homeland.

Lydia's life journey takes her from the tranquil, tropical Cuban countryside to the grind and grit of New York City's tenements, but it also takes her from the height of youth, beauty, privilege, prestige, and pride, to the tedium of middle age and anonymity....a universal journey, intensified by her exiled, immigrant status. Like all true heros, Lydia, with all her flaws, evokes empathy as she "muddles" through life, searching for her truth. Muchas gracias, Oscar......

"Empress of the Splendid Season" is the story of Lydia Espana, who was a society girl in Cuba before the revolution and who doesn't have such a wonderful life when she emigrates to New York. She is a very complex character, filled with longings and human frailities, but a positive character who is even heroic at times in a modest way. She meets and falls in love with a waiter and they have two children. When Lydia's husband, Raul, becomes ill with his heart, she has to assume the responsibility of supporting the family by her work as a "cleaning lady." She's forced to give up her dreams of romance and of a better life.

This is a wonderful book, well worth the time and effort it takes to read it. Oscar Hijuelos is one of the best writers around and fans of his work will not be disappointed by this one. However, I had the impression that this book doesn't break any new ground and doesn't quite rise to the level of his great earlier novels, "The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love" and "Mr. Ives' Christmas."

The book is a graceful work about the life of an immigrant family in New York from the 40's to the present day. The book focuses on Lydia, a working class heroine, who goes from being a pampered, spoiled undisciplined rich girl in pre-revolutionary Cuba to a cleaning lady laboring for the well to do of the Big Apple. The book works best when focusing on the every day life of the dozens of every day characters that we meet. Although there is no major out of the ordinary climaxes in the story, Hijuelos' excellent prose makes us see how heroic ordinary life is. I reccommend this book.

It never ceases to amaze me that a male author can "capture" the spirit of a female, and represent a female as well as this author does. I also respect his ability to illuminate poverty--what it feels like to be poor, a minority, a stranger in a strange land. This author has much wisdom about the counter-balancing force of a strong worth ethic in this poor woman's life. The striving is melancholy; the mentality of poverty is in part that things will never change. She has a chronic sorrow . . . But Lydia is a lifelong learner, I feel, and a person able to adapt.

I can't imagine how other reviewers could call this book boring. I could have read it in one sitting, I just loved it. The period it evokes, the location (NYC), and the window on early Cuba -- all wonderful. Heartbreaking, real, complex, richly detailed, beautifully written. Can't wait to read "Mambo" now that I've been exposed to this great writer.

I enjoyed reading this book even though it was not in the same category as "The Mambo Kings". The story is enjoyable and well-written; however, at the end the reader feels like they never really got to know Lydia's children very well. They are portrayed as stereotypical teenagers for the first 1/2 of the novel and then the daughter all but disappears from the rest of the story. I would have preferred a more in-depth description of those characters.

Oscar Hijuelos writes of people with intense rich interior lives. These are people we admire for their emotional constancy and pity for their obsessions. I've read three of Oscar Hijuelos' novels. This is the least engaging of the three, but still a very nice book.

Not that this isn't a good novel. But with its Cuban immigrants in New York, great writing and not much of a plot, this is a book that the author's already written a couple times before.

This is a novel that could be turned into a dramatic and engaging movie along the lines of "Mambo Kings." Nothing happens in this or other Hijeulos novels of great magnitude beyond the small circles of characters they embrace. But that's what makes this book great. He does a good job of transporting the reader into the lives of nobody important but who are filled with great dreams and aspirations. And there's enough intelligence and political and social commentary to elevate it beyond the typical hack drama and movie of the week dribble that books like this often are. It won't change the world, but it's an engaging and enjoyable read.