Customer Reviews

Mr. Ives' Christmas

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

It's a diamond that cuts into the great spiritual wasteland. Oscar Hijuelos nails the virtues of moral truths and redemption of love, forgiveness, compassion -- those simple selfless qualities that our world considers trite. He does it through an amazing story of a quiet, humble man whose deep faith inspired: Ed Ives. This book is among my top favorites ever. I laughed, cried (blubbered while reading parts to my wife, actually) . . .

Ed Ives is of an unknown origin. His search for an identity and an understanding of life beyond his present situation prompts him to explore the world. While he does not find what he is looking for a series of mystical experiences provide him with what he needs. The needless murder of his son Robert shakes his life and marriage like a great and devestating earthquake. He is forced to make sense of his world in light of this travesty. It is here that the carefully woven Christmas motif of author Oscar Hijuelos emerges with its spiritual splendor. Christmas operates like an epiphany in the life of Mr. Ives. It serves as a reaffirmation of the goodness that inherently exists in this often dark world. It is a testimony to all that is of worth to a life in search of meaning. It is also the occasion of Ed's superhuman forgiveness of his son's killer. This is a marvelous book of tracing a life's movement against the current of despair. It is in the Christian world of the spiritually-minded Ed Ives that the struggle to embrace good in a world stained with evil is ultimately won.

Yes, Hijuelos won the Pulitzer for Mambo Kings. Mambo Kings deserved two Pulitzers: it was excellent. But Mr. Ives Christmas exists on a different level; it's among the best books written in the past twenty years. Hijuelos' style is lyrically exquisite, his tone soft and measured, his insight is startling and poignant. A profound, moving, nearly perfect piece from one of America's most gifted, beautiful writers. Takes the best of American realism and dips it into latin magic to produce Hijuelos' best book by far - a book that every human being should read.

I am willing to bet that, many years from now, Oscar Hijuelos will be remembered almost entirely for The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, his admiring tribute to 1950's mambo-crazed New York. I am not a gambler, but the critical praise and popularity of this novel tilts the odds in my favor. A less sure bet, and one that I'm more tempted to make, is that Mr. Ives' Christmas will endure as a favorite among Hijuelos fans. At least, I hope this quiet, slim, touching novel endures.

At a time when the Christian right flexes its intolerance at Bob Jones University and Jerry Falwell's pulpit, this novel of Christian love and hope reminds us of those who quietly abide by these virtues. As he does with the central characters of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, Hijuelos walks us through the entire life of Mr. Ives, a man who humbly lives in his apartment in New York, who marries for love, and who nurtures a joyful family. At a time when many middle-class families are flocking to the suburbs, Mr. Ives savors the diversity of his Manhattan neighborhood. When tragedy strikes, his faith enables him to forgive.

Mr. Ives' Christmas is a rich novel, not simply because it enlivens Christian virtues, but because in doing so, it tackles our contemporary struggles with issues of race, class, and gender. This is not a sugar-coated tale, but a real story of Christian love in our world.

I can be petty and focus on the son, who is too perfect a teenager, or focus on the miraculous cure of Mr. Ives' skin disease, or focus on his Catholic beliefs and how promptly and frequently he engaged in fornication with Annie (before holy matrimony!). But somehow i have to give this book a grand total of 5 starts, because its positive aspects far outweigh my criticisms. I love the vignette format, because it is not only a fresh approach to telling a story, but also the very way we recount a life. Hijuelos does a superb job describing the fossilizing of Ives' feelings, his self-pity disguised as stoicism, Annie's frustration, Ramirez's way of being (by far, the most endearing character in the book; i cried when i read about his travel bag and its contents).

Funny that the novel spans over 70 years of the life of Mr. Ives, because the pace is fast and the narrative is colorful, yet refined. The core of the book, Mr. Ives' feelings and religious sentiment, plus his wondering about identity and background, are examined with an elegant simplicity, despite the conflicting emotions he has in both counts. This is an excellent portrayal of a good man, who puts his money (and time, and effort) where his mouth is, the very essence of Christian love. What a sweet human being. How touching the scene where he follows a woman fantasizing that she is his birth mother, and he is somehow protecting her from potential muggers. How touching that he enjoys the ethnic diversity and his dealings with the Hispanic and Black communities. How could anyone possibly not enjoy Mr. Ives in all his goodness?

"Mr. Ives Christmas" is about a faithful man whose teenage son is cruelly murdered at Christmastime. It's a stunning story about religious faith. Hijuelos takes things of the spirit very seriously, and sacred events indeed occur in the novel. It climaxes with a series of epiphanies, in the very literal sense of that word. Hijuelos makes frequent fitting reference to Dickens and "A Christmas Carol" because his story is about the tragedies of life, but also the grace of God that is available to "those that are good." I finished this novel at 3 a.m., in tears. I can't recommend it highly enough.

I read a lot, and this was the most honestly moving book I have read in a long, long time. Beautiful, painful, funny, surprising, achingly sad, hopeful. It seems to say everything about life in the very specific tale of a multi-faceted man.

Another wonderful Oscar Hijuelos novel-- so different than "Mambo Kings" yet so powerful. Hijuelos has done what thousands of sermonizers and preachers could never do. He has exemplified faith through the story of a real man in a real world with real problems. Edward Ives is not perfect and his struggle to find God is not dramatic - it takes his entire lifetime, but a simple faith sustains him. I'm not Catholic, but this story demonstrates how the church and those that are a part of it can be God's instrument in an imperfect world -- just the opposite of the tremendous beating the church has taken recently. "Mr. Ives' Christmas" is a beautiful story, the people are real, and the theme is profound. The author has made a powerful statement in a calm & quiet manner.

Although I am temperamentally drawn to tales of this kind, there were times when I felt that the characters were a bit manipulated: Ives too good, too silent, Ramirez a bit of a 'latino' stock character. However, the narrative style - a series of little vignettes - had the quality of memory; people really do remember their lives through a succession of episodes. The novel has a strong physical quality: it evoked New York in the 50s and 60s so well... and some of the characters, such as Ives' wife, are so delicately and complete drawn, that they seem to breathe. I loved reading this book, even if the story left me rather unconvinced.

Oscar Hijuelos' Mr. Ives' Christmas tells the tale of a gentle, saintly man's 30-year search to re-find his god after his son is killed one Christmas Eve by a teenage thug.

Hijuelos -- the author of Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love -- tells the tale of a sensitive, caring man who, abandoned by his probably Hispanic parents as a toddler, finds his way to a position of prominence as an illustrator with a New York advertising agency. Although raised by a white widower, Mr. Ives never forgets his roots and finds his friends and home as an adult in a New York neighborhood that is mostly lower-middle class and Hispanic. As an adult, he is devoted to the church and to the surrounding Hispanic community until his 17-year-old son -- who plans to enter the seminary -- is killed in front of his church after choir practice one Christmas eve in the 1960's. His killer is a Puerto Rican teenager.

Hijuelos' prose is poetry and music. You feel Mr. Ives' pain and sense of loss. You see and feel its effects on the people who surround him -- his friends, his family, his priests. Along the way, in his 30-year search, Ives also loses, then recovers the love and joy he feels for his wife and daughter.

Hijuelos turns an improbably melodramatic premise into a warm, romantic tale of a community's love for its troubled saint and its struggle to help him find his way to a reunion with his god.

Most assuredly not just a Christmas tale, Mr. Ives' Christmas is a story for those nights when you turn from the evening news feeling tortured, hoping (or praying) that the world will find the strength to right itself.

Stuart Gordon