Empress of the Splendid Season (Hardcover)

~ Oscar Hijuelos (Author) "In 1957 when her beloved husband, Raul, had fallen ill, Lydia Espana went to work, cleaning the apartments of New Yorkers much better off than..." (more)
Key Phrases: splendid season, sewing factory, New York, Central Park, Park Avenue (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The collision of Cuban dreams with sometimes harsh American realities has been Oscar Hijuelos's great theme, most notably in Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. Certainly it's at the heart of his fifth novel, Empress of the Splendid Season, which chronicles the trials, tribulations, and infrequent triumphs of a Cuban American clan over the course of a half century. The protagonist, Lydia Espana, has grown up in pre-Castro Cuba, the pampered daughter of a prosperous businessman. But when she has the audacity to violate her father's small-town code of conduct--by sleeping with an itinerant musician--she pays a terrible penalty: "Her family, turning unfairly against her with a nearly Biblical wrath, had banished her, unprepared to contend with an indifferent world."

Where is Lydia banished to? New York, of course. And in this most indifferent of cities, the former "queen of the Congo line" finds herself in a less exalted role: that of a cleaning woman. This demotion she accepts with a very credible mixture of resignation and rock-ribbed realism: "The hardest part of being a cleaning woman had to do with the way people looked at her; often as if she were 'nothing.' It hurt her most when men did not notice her. The nature of the work itself, the outfit, the end-of-the-day fatigue, the messiness of that labor were not glamorous, so what could she expect." Lydia is less sanguine about her family's difficulties, from her husband Raul's near-fatal heart attack to her son's brushes with the law. Empress of the Splendid Season is in fact an ensemble piece that passes the point of view from character to character, from generation to generation. But it's Lydia's sensibility--at once stoic and sensuous--that ultimately enlivens this latest take on the American (or perhaps Cuban American) Dream. --William Davies

From Publishers Weekly

As in The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Hijuelos imagines the life of a humble Cuban-American from the late '40s to the present. Latin sensuality turns to Yankee drudgery when Lydia Espana the spoiled daughter of a small-town Cuban alcalde, is banished from her home in 1947 for staying out till dawn after a dance. Romantic and uneducated, she moves to New York, where marries, and becomes a cleaning woman to keep her sick husband (a handsome waiter with refined manners) and two children from the brink of poverty. Lydia worries and dotes in the manner of a quintessential immigrant mother trying to maintain respectability and make ends meet. While the drab black-and-white of her daily life runs its course, a rich Technicolor fantasy of time-before plays through her head. In memory, Lydia is again the Empress of the Splendid Season, beautiful enough to catch the eye of a Hollywood star. Depicting Spanish Harlem with relentless realism, Hijuelos penetrates the lives behind the humble tenements and massive university buildings. With poignancy, he captures the lonely fear of Lydia's son as he makes his way up the ladder of American success, the apex of which is perhaps not as enviable as he and Lydia assume. Familiar Hijuelos elements?Latin music, introspective men, touches of magic realism in quietly powerful prose?render here a tender and undramatic portrait of a complex woman and her culture. Agent, Harriet Wasserman. Literary Guild selection.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: HarperCollins; 1st edition (January 27, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060175702
• ISBN-13: 978-0060175702
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (22 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,887,903 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Cleaning Lady's Song of Love, February 6, 1999

By	[e-mail] (new york city) - See all my reviews

Oscar Hijuelos again creates an achingly poignant tale of the myriad joys and sorrows encountered in "ordinary" lives. Wonderfully evocative of New York City throughout the fifties, sixties and early seventies, the story follows the life of Lydia Colon, banished as a teen from her well-to-do family in Cuba by her father, irate over an amorous episode, and tossed into circumstances she considers below her standing. Her young husband's frail health forces her to take a position cleaning the homes of affluent New Yorkers, and brings her painfully close to lives of priviledge and plenty as she herself once felt destined to have. The author captures the fatigue and frustration of lives dimmed by resignation and ill fortune and yet never misses the sometimes brief, but meaningful and mysterious instances when happiness and comfort appear. As in Hijuelos' other works, also addressed are the issues of what it is to be Cuban, how to preserve that identity, and how to pass it along to generations entirely removed from an increasingly mythical island homeland.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful., July 29, 1999

By	Anne Piervincenzi ([e-mail]) (New York) - See all my reviews

Lydia's life journey takes her from the tranquil, tropical Cuban countryside to the grind and grit of New York City's tenements, but it also takes her from the height of youth, beauty, privilege, prestige, and pride, to the tedium of middle age and anonymity....a universal journey, intensified by her exiled, immigrant status. Like all true heros, Lydia, with all her flaws, evokes empathy as she "muddles" through life, searching for her truth. Muchas gracias, Oscar......

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Not his best but very enjoyable., April 18, 1999

By	Allen Kopp (St. Louis, Mo. USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

"Empress of the Splendid Season" is the story of Lydia Espana, who was a society girl in Cuba before the revolution and who doesn't have such a wonderful life when she emigrates to New York. She is a very complex character, filled with longings and human frailities, but a positive character who is even heroic at times in a modest way. She meets and falls in love with a waiter and they have two children. When Lydia's husband, Raul, becomes ill with his heart, she has to assume the responsibility of supporting the family by her work as a "cleaning lady." She's forced to give up her dreams of romance and of a better life.

This is a wonderful book, well worth the time and effort it takes to read it. Oscar Hijuelos is one of the best writers around and fans of his work will not be disappointed by this one. However, I had the impression that this book doesn't break any new ground and doesn't quite rise to the level of his great earlier novels, "The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love" and "Mr. Ives' Christmas."