The Messenger [Paperback]

Mayra Montero (Author), Edith Grossman (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1999

Set in Cuba, this brooding novel tells the story of two star-crossed lovers, tenor Enrico Caruso and his mulatta mistress, whose destinies unfold to the rhythms of African and Chinese magic. Print features.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Here are the facts: in June of 1920 the legendary Italian tenor Enrico Caruso arrived in Havana, Cuba, on tour. During a matinee performance of Aïda a bomb went off in the Teatro Nacional, and Caruso, in a panic, rushed out into the streets of the city and disappeared for several days. Taking off from this historical footnote, Cuban-born writer Mayra Montero has impressively imagined what might have occurred during the singer's "lost weekend." The Messenger is narrated by Aida Petrirena Cheng, a Chinese Cuban mulatto woman whom Caruso literally runs into just moments after the explosion. If the singer is shocked by events, Aida is not; she has already been warned by her godfather, a Santería priest, that a man "will come to crown you and tell you that you are the queen of his thoughts. Before that you will hear the thunder, the walls will fall down, there will be dust and fire." She instantly recognizes that Caruso is the man of her godfather's vision, and with that recognition comes a frisson of fear, for old José de Calazán Bangoché had given another warning.

"On that day--listen carefully--take your protection out of your clothing and put it over your hair. Then you bring me that man, you will have to bring him to me." He picked up the ékuele and hid it between his hands. "He is coming to die. But if you don't want that, bring him to me right away, he will not die. Bring him so you won't be tainted. He is not coming to die: he is already dead when he comes."

Aida does as she is told, bringing Caruso to her godfather's house where she and the singer soon become lovers. As their love affair escalates, so does the danger--from the people Caruso believes are trying to kill him, but even more from the disease that is slowly consuming him.

Montero tells this star-crossed tale from several perspectives: Aida, her daughter, Enriqueta, and the testimonials of several different witnesses to the events of that June day when the bomb first went off. Propelled by the rhythms of santeria, infused with folk lore and magic, The Messenger is a magical portrait of love that comes too late--and death that comes too soon. --Alix Wilber

From Publishers Weekly

When the great tenor Enrico Caruso sang Aida in Havana in 1920, a bomb exploded during a performance. Caruso fled; nobody knows where he went. Cuban-born novelist Montero (In the Palm of Darkness) turns the paucity of facts about Caruso's disappearance into an appealing and richly mythic fiction. In her plot, Caruso escapes from the incendiary wreckage into the arms of a beautiful Chinese-Cuban mulatta, Aida Cheng. Aida's godfather, Jos? de Calaz n Bangoch?, is a powerful santero (a priest of the Afro-Caribbean religion Santeria), who speaks to Afro-Cuban gods and can know the future through a magic chain called the ?kuele, or messenger. Jos? has foreseen the explosion, Aida's affair and Caruso's impending death: he wants to keep Aida far from the doomed opera singer, but Aida determines to save Caruso. Two narrators relate the impassioned adventures that follow. One is Aida Cheng herself; the other is Enriqueta, Aida's daughter by Caruso, who has grown up to confirm her mother's tale by reading newspapers and interviewing surviving witnesses. The paired narrators deliver a harmony of passion and melancholy, and create a chainlike ?kuele connecting past to future. Montero's Caruso and Aida clearly descend from Verdi's Rhadames and Aida; more interestingly, Montero suggests that Rhadames and Aida are the Afro-Cuban gods Chango and Yemaya, whose ill-fated love forever keeps them apart, and who forever seek earthly bodies to occupy. Montero's visions of intercontinental culture-clash, star-crossed lovers and historical violence fully justify the operatic treatment she provides. In Grossman's clean translation, Montero's authorial dexterity avoids grandiose pageantry, keeping the action clear and the pace right. The result is a novel, rich in metaphor and allusion, that will leave most readers breathless as its final curtain drops.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 218 pages
• Publisher: Harperflamingo; 1st edition (May 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060192232
• ISBN-13: 978-0060192235
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,105,844 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exquisite handling of multiple points of view - must read, May 1, 1999

By 

M. J. Smith (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: The Messenger (Paperback)

The Palm of Darkness left me wanting more of Mayra Montero. I expected another excellent book - I got an exquisite one. Montero masterfully handles a variety of voices, scene changes that are cultural as well as temporal, and weaves them into a magnificant unity. The story is sufficiently compelling that one appreciates the craftmanship only in retrospect.

Within my taste she stands with Emmanuel Carrere, Luis Sepulveda, and Antonio Tabbuchi as a true contemporary master of the novel.

4.0 out of 5 stars A Murky, Sweaty, Uneven But Ultimately Satisfying Book, April 14, 2009

By 

Tony H (New York, NY, United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Messenger: A Novel (Paperback)

This imagined love story between the great Enrico Caruso and a Chinese-Cuban local is based on an actual event, a bomb that went off while Caruso was performing Aida at the Teatro Nacional in June of 1920, and which caused him to flee into the street and disappear for a week, fearing for his life.

This book comes in two parts: the first half is mostly setup, explaining the woman (Aida Cheng)'s patchwork personal history, and how her family managed to meld the spirituality of both China and Cuba into some kind of earthy herbal cocktail. It delves a little into Caruso's past, and how he wound up coming to Cuba to get away from the dark forces in Italy and New York that he felt were following him, but Aida Cheng is clearly the protagonist, and though she's a simple woman, Mayra Montero writes a great amount of depth into her emotions. This is a character whose feelings start just below the skin and run very deep.

The second half of the book, after the explosion, when Aida and Enrico go into hiding, is where the book takes off. Dream sequences bleed into each other as if the reader has been affected by some of the spells that are constantly being thrown about. Aida and Enrico cling to each other through their dark swampy ordeal like animals huddled against an oncoming storm. They get help from the most powerful people in their respective worlds, and it's almost enough to get them to safety. But Enrico has a wife already, and Aida Cheng has no idea about the world outside of Cuba, and the ending, while not bleak, seems to have been foretold by the spirits all along.

This is a murky, uneven, sweaty book, that will make you feel like you're constantly waking up out of a surreal and slightly harrowing dream. No knock on the translation, but I'd like to read this in the original Spanish at some point, as this is ultimately a wonderful read in English.

5.0 out of 5 stars Good fiction, January 20, 2001

By 

Floria (Dresden, Sachsen Germany) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Messenger (Paperback)

I loved the book because it deals with Enrico Caruso, the greatest tenor who ever lived, and it is very well written. The story takes place in Cuba and describes what happened after a bomb exploded during an Aida performance of Caruso (this starting place of the story really happened) - for the rest of the story - one has to admit that it is purely fictional. Caruso taking part in strange Voodoo ceremonies, the black hand persecuting him and chasing him all over Cuba and he strangely in love with a Chinese girl. Also in the description of the looks and the character of Caruso I could not actually recognize him.... But who cares when the story as a story itself is so exiting. The magic of the book lies in its description of fate and tragedy around the famous man. Somehow its easy to take mentally part in the story...and you'll read it in a night, so thrilling and exiting is the book... I had the feeling it was written by somebody who fell in love with the famous voice and added a little bit too much imagination :-) It's like an opera of Verdi - you think it's absurd, but you love it.

Ps: Who already owns the book and is interested to know, the name written on the picture (KiKo) is one of Caruso's nicknames. If you want to have a look on it, you'll find it in Dorothy Caruso's book about her husband.