I Gave You All I Had [Paperback]

Zoe Valdes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 15, 2000

I Gave You All I Had gives us Cuca Martinez, the youngest child in a brood of five born in pre-revoltionary Cuba. This wonderfully lyrical novel sings Cuca's life-sing from childhood through motherhood as she fights to survive and be happy in a world oh which fortune has consistently failed to smile. While Cuca waits for the return of her true love from America, Cuba slowly descends into a repressive slumber, in which Cuca and her friends pass the time by remembering, loving and talking. I Gave You All I Had is an outrageously funny, erotically charged, and daring novel.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Winsome 16-year-old Cuca Martinez, the heroine of this exuberant Cuban anti-romance, is newly arrived in 1950s Havana from the Cuban countryside, working as a tenement housemaid. When her roommates, good-natured and rambunctious whores La Mechunga and La Puchunga, introduce her to their favorite nightclub in the city of sensual delights, Cuca falls for lounge lizard Juan "Uan" Perez, who teaches her to dance and kiss but loses interest when she resists his further advances. Eight years later, Cuca, still a virgin, is overjoyed when Uan reenters her life. The two lovers indulge in a marathon of steamy sex and set up house, but Uan's ties to the mob hasten his departure on the eve of the revolution, his parting gift to the pregnant Cuca a mysterious dollar bill. Cuca and her two "sluttish aunts," La M. and La P., live on in the ruined city where poverty and degradation reign, raiding the black market to provide for Cuca's child, Maria Regla, who quickly becomes a bumptious young Communist. Thirty-six years later, the mob sends Uan, who has been living the good life in Miami, back to Havana to retrieve the dollar bill, key to a Swiss bank account. The reunion of the star-crossed lovers is both pitiful and hilarious, with now-toothless and malnourished Cuca enthusing over Uan's face-lift. Amazingly, the couple rekindle their passion, but their joy is curtailed when Uan is seized by the secret police and Cuca falls ill. Vald?s (Yocandra in the Paradise of Nada) won Spain's prestigious Planeta Prize for this novel, and deservedly so; she skillfully infuses her Rabelaisian ode to pre-Castro Havana with biting satire aimed at the repressive regime. In this English-language edition, translator Benabid captures with colloquial ease the pulsating rhythms of Vald?s's ebullient prose. (Nov.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

I Gave You All I Had ($24.95; Nov.; 256 pp.;1-55970-477-2): A wonderful second novel from the Cuban-born author of Yocandra in the Paradise of Nada (1997) builds an impressive picture of Havana before, during, and in the wake of the Castro Revolution, while telling the exuberant story of former country girl Cuca Martinez's riotous life and loves. Teenaged Cuca's fixation on suave, seductive Juan Perez (the only ``Uan'' for her) somehow survives his vaguely criminal associations, their (consequent) 30-year separation, and even ``Uan's'' canny manipulation of Cuca in a scam involving Cuba's invisible crimelords. Valds plays ingenious metafictional tricks with her loquacious narrator (who is, and isn't, its heroine, and who keeps bursting in on the action, to high comic effect), and portrays the storys deliciously observed characters (including Cuca's surrogate mothers in the wicked city, a pair of hilariously feisty whores, and also her militantly Communist daughter Maria Regla) with infectious warmth and energy. Fidel probably won't be amused, but the rest of Valds's readers are in for a treat. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 242 pages
• Publisher: Arcade Publishing; Reprint edition (November 15, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1559705418
• ISBN-13: 978-1559705417
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,916,126 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A studied, original, literate novel, February 3, 2001

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: I Gave You All I Had (Hardcover)

Cuca Martinez is the youngest child in a brood of five, born in pre-revolutionary Cuba to a flighty, aspiring actress and a Chinese enthusiast of New World riches upon whom fortune has consistently failed to smile. At the age of ten, Cuca is sent to live with her grandmother; at sixteen she heads for Havana in search of work. Pre-revolutionary Havana is a sultry capital of music and seduction where life is lived to the percussive beat of the mambo and rhumba, and every event comes with a sensual invitation. It is also where two other girls introduce Cuca into the sweet mischief of nighttime Havana where she meets Juan who will be the love of her live -- and then disappear for eight years. On the eve of the Revolution Juan returns and Cuca beliefs her dreams are finally to be realized. But the political climate and Juan's shady dealings force him into hasty exile in America. So Cuca waits in Cuba for the realization of promised dreams, all the while struggles, along with her friends, to survive through improvisation, scavenging, and conversation. Enthusiastically recommended reading, I Gave You All I Had is a studied, original, literate novel that is humorous, lively, original, heartbreaking, and life affirming.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Read it!, October 10, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: I Gave You All I Had (Hardcover)

A truly facinating book! It is two love stories at the same time. One is the main character's (Cuca's) love for the first man she ever kissed. This love story goes on from their first meeting in the late 1950s to their last meeting in the mid-1990s. The second is the author's love for Havana, and her disappointment in the Castro regime. This love story develops from a colourful picture of the open and international Havana of the 1950s into a depressingly accurate description of today's isolated communist Havana, where food, clothes and other essentials are luxury goods available only for the newly rich (whether party elite or people working in the dollar economy). Both these themes are comunicated in a beautiful, quick, and direct language that makes the reader feel present in Havana. You can actually smell the dirt, hear the ocean, breathe the air and feel the music. I'd certainly recommend it to all, especially if you are either intersted in Cuba or the Latin American style of writing - or both!

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Funny and irreverent, March 1, 2000

By 

Mari - See all my reviews

This review is from: I Gave You All I Had (Hardcover)

It's a wonderful satire, dripping sensuality and wit. The description of Havana's sizzling nightlife before the revolution is fantastic, you will actually feel you're partying with the characters, and just for the way Cuquita, the main character, makes fun of herself (and practically everyone else, including you-know-who) and her delusions with a man that rarely gives her a thought, I can almost forgive her stupidity in waiting for him for thirty years. The ending depressed me, though. Tip: if you can, read it in its original language.