Customer Reviews

Singing from the Well (King Penguin)

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
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The first novel of Arenas's "Pentagonia" ... beautiful, poignant, and at times downright frustrating. Reality and fantasy seamlessly interweave in this depiction of a boy's childhood in pre-Castro Cuba. I am having a difficult time putting into words my experience with this novel. Arenas's prose is gorgeous, poetic in its lyricism, crossing into a style that reads like a fusion between Walt Whitman and James Joyce, reminiscent of the latter particularly in the novel's final section, a mad and hallucinatory set piece that takes place during Christmas and is written completely as dialogue. There is much abuse - both physical and psychological - to be endured in these pages, yet through it all Arenas maintains a strangely uplifting tone. His descriptions of nature are stunning in their simplicity and detail, as is the relationship between the young narrator and his mother that provides the through-line around which the action of the novel centers.

By its end, the reader is left moved and exhilarated, yet painfully aware that life for this boy and his mother really isn't going to get much better ... and, if we are to read the narrator as Reinaldo Arenas himself, in fact, will get much much worse.

I was frequently reminded of Julian Schnabel's film of Arenas's memoir "Before Night Falls", particularly of the early childhood scenes at the beginning of the film. If you haven't seen it, it serves as an excellent introduction to the life of this amazing artist. If you have seen it, the film stands to be viewed again.

"There went my mother, she just went running out the door. She was screaming like a crazy woman that she was going to jump down the well. I see my mother at the bottom of the well. I see her floating in the greenish water choked with leaves. So I run for the yard, out to where the well is, that's fenced around with a wellhead of naked-boy saplings so rickety it's almost falling in."

So begins Singing from the Well. In some respects, this book reminds me of Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. In Singing from the Well, we read the tale of a young boy in the poverty of pre-revolutionary Cuba, a tale in which the characters are not only the boy's family, but who are allegories for Cuba. The narrative jumps about and is mixed with both what the boy sees as real and what he fantasizes about. Reality for the boy holds violence, both at the hands of his peers and his family. So he takes solice in another reality that includes his dead cousin Celestino, who carves beautiful poetry into the trunks of trees.

This is the first book in a series by Arenas that follows this boy's life during the period just before the revolution. It is a tremendously moving book, but cannot be considered uplifting. The reader who takes the challenge to read this will be rewarded.

As a student of literature I have read my fair share of books. So far, this is my favorite. It is incredibly emotional and I found myself completely attached to the narrator. I have not read the rest of the books in Arena's collection, what he calls the Pentagonia, but now I plan to do so. Read this book! It is worth your time.

This is the first novel by Reinaldo and his only work published in cuba. This is a fine work. It is in my opion not as easy as some of his other works. The language is in keeping with his other works such as The Assult, and The Brightest Star. The descritive, expressionist language can at times be complex but this is wonderfully readable. I have been working my way through Reinaldo's pentagonia and this must be read to understand the author. Marvelous.

Singing from the Well by Reinaldo Arenas

First book in Arenas' "secret history of Cuba," a quintet he called the "Patagonia, Singing from the Well."

An autobiographical recount on his youth, his mother talks piously of the Heaven that awaits the good, while disciplining him with an ox prod. His grandmother burns his treasured crosses for kindling. His cousins meet to plt his grandfather's death.

However, in the hills surrounding his home, another reality exists, a place where his mother wears flowers in her head, and his cousin, Celestino, a poet who inscribe verses on tree trunks, shares his visions.

A stunning depiction of a childhood besieged by horror, a world of barbarity, persecution and ignorance--and how a child's imagination creates a moving defense of liberty and shields himself from the horrors of growing up through his imagination.

Unfortunately, Arenas combines several genres to tell his story: poetry, prose, theater, most of the time being repetitious or just not making sense. This makes it hard to follow, as Arenas creates a vision of his Cuba.

I could not put this book down ...even though sometimes I thought I would throw up..incredibly honest and very descriptive, I actually fell in love with Reinaldo, if he were alive today I would give anything to meet him..even though I am female , I think he would like me , and our love of the ocean would bind us together!!!oops this review is meant for before night falls