Beautiful Maria of My Soul

This book covers a period of time around early 50's before Fidel Castro was in fully in power..Havana was a wide -open city full of wild music, dancing, drinking,and hotels with rich tourists looking for fun. Into this atmosphere comes young Maria from the countryside who gets involved with this lifestyle through her dancing and men in her life..She is caught up in the nightlife and the destinies of Nestor and Ignacio..Nestor eventually heads to New York to play with the popular, new Mombo Kings Band.The rest of the story involves Maria's love life and subsequent life experiences away from her native land. From the bright colorful book jacket to the wild night life, the book conveys the look and feel of the times. Even the dress on the streets and the flamboyant costumes of the clubs, portray the loose morals, hedonistic activities and whirlwind romance of Cuba. The book is well -written by Oscar Hijuelos who is also a character in the book as observer of this true story of romance and life between couples in the new evolving cities of New York, Miami and Havana. With its sensuality and accepted sexual practices, it paints a picture of those heady days of youth. I highly recommend the book to those more worldly, mature readers.

How do you follow-up a Pulitzer-prize winner like Hijuelos's //The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love//? Hijuelos plucks Maria, the elusive muse from that story, and places her growth and history alongside the growth and history of Havana and Cuba during the revolutionary 50s and 60s. Maria is a perfectly flawed character--at times cold, impervious and selfish, yet absolutely real and therefore more than likable. Hijuelos poignantly captures the superb magic of first love in a beach scene that will break your heart, and builds Maria from child to woman to mother with a masterful hand alongside the bustle, smells and lusciousness of Cuba and Havana. Her intersection with Nestor, the main character from //The Mambo Kings//, is only a small piece of the book, and so she can be appreciated by those who have or haven't read //The Mambo Kings//. But since this is a delicious re-creation of life, love, and Cuba, this book leave you hungry for more. Bolstered by warm scenes of sex and relationships, along with the hot scenes of Havana nightlife, this book is a feast; it employs Cuban food imagery for everything from sex to dancing. A near-perfect follow-up to //Mambo Kings//.

Oscar Hijuelos is back with his unique blend of rich atmosphere (almost always of Cuba and/or New York), vivid characterizations, irony, uninhibited sensuality, Catholicism, and tenderness. In this one he even has the cheek to include himself as a character (though amusingly he admits to what might be considered his two flaws: wordiness and a strange obsession with large male members). For all that, Beautiful Maria finds the author back at his best -- intoxicating, engrossing, engaging, and painfully human.

It is always a pleasure to me when I learn that an author has written a second novel, utilizing a character or situation in a beloved novel. Two examples come to mind. One is Geraldine Brooks' "March" in which she expands the father's character in Louisa May Alcott's "Little Women". A second example is Sebastian Barry's recent "Secret Scripture" based on a character from his lyrical earlier novel, "The Whereabouts of Eneas McNulty". Now, this literary treat is provided by Oscar Hijuelos, the Cuban-American author of the Nobel prize-winning, "The Mambo Kings Sing Songs of Love." It was a privilege to read this novel in an Advanced Reader Copy by way of [...]. Hijuelos rewinds the "Mambo Kings" story to the beginning and tells the tale of Maria Garcia y Cifuentes, a poor girl from the campo who uses her beauty and determination to land jobs dancing in post-war Havana in the 1940s. She crosses paths with Nestor Castillo, one of the brothers who go on to become the Mambo Kings when they emigrate to the US. Their affair is tumultuous, but ultimately they part. Nestor is haunted by Maria and writes an achingly beautiful song, a bolero called "Beautiful Maria of My Soul" as an expression of his love. The song becomes famous and sets the Mambo Kings on their course to fame. This novel is an interesting contrast to "Mambo Kings". The story line is about Maria's struggles as a young woman with no family and the way she plays her odds in order to survive. It has been some time since I read the first novel, but "Beautiful Maria" is quieter, and seems to run deeper. Both are about life choices and life's compromises and how we come to reconcile ourselves to both. Hijuelos skillfully creates a complete, complex character, from that relatively short episode from the first novel, and plays out a parallel life. Almost humorously, Hijuelos is a character in his own novel. After the success of Mambo Kings, he encounters the real Maria as the result of a book signing in Florida. The two develop an odd relationship and Maria has an ironic celebrity among the Cuban-American community as the subject of the bolero they all cherish as a reminder of the pre-Castro days in Cuba. Readers will enjoy this new offering by Oscar Hijuelos. It provides an intriguing contrast and counter-balance to the vibrant "Mambo Kings" and in the closing chapters, weaves together one complete plot line. In Maria Garcia y Cifuentes creates not just an interesting peek into a minor character, but a full-blown literary character in her own right. Well done

Unlike some of the other reviewers, I have not read the Mambo Kings nor Hijuelos before. I am completely captivated and enthralled by this book. It is told from the title character's perspective. It's important to keep this in mind, because Maria is (was) an illiterate farm girl who went to Havana to find her dreams...the story told as she relates her life to her daughter. As a result, I found the author's characterizations of men's reactions to her, the sex, the emotions, the seediness, the beauty completely fitting. It's almost as if you are immersed with her, in the city where she cannot read a sign and knows no one. You feel her pain, her loneliness and understand her choices (even as she relates that they were not always good ones). You grow with her and see the world through her eyes and it's not always pretty. Yes, the sex is a bit repetitive, but quite frankly, fits the storyline well and brings an air of reality to it.