Customer Reviews

Thirteen Tangos for Stravinsky

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Catholic Library World reviews in March 2001:

This moving collection of memoirs, told in thirteen stories, each a dance in time and space, recounts the author's turbulent journey from Costa Rica to Los Angeles and the painful challenges facing an immigrant youngster in the 30s and 40s, a period that still retained some innocence. Cardona-Hine's coming-of-age story reveals a boy's first experiences with English, his infatuations with American girls, and the pain of high school bullying and otherness. After Pearl Harbor, the family flees to Mexico, seeking a home, wanting to belong somewhere. Feeling more alone there than in California, they return to the United States where they rent an apartment in their home to a series of pathetic individuals: Jews escaping from Europe, a young couple in love who fall out of love, a Frenchman who dies upon learning of the taking of Paris. Surrounded by people experiencing human tragedies, but living in the warmth and fruitfulness of California,they manage to survive.

Beautifully written poetry in prose form, Cardona-Hine's delightful reminiscences make the reader pause to admire unexpected combinations of words and images. This is a book to read slowly and to savor. Belonging to the genre of memoir and bildungsroman, this series of stream-of-consciousness meanderings through a time gone by, creates a mood that only approximates reality.