Dancing to "Almendra"

This opening line introduces a crime thriller that takes off at a gallop--a unique combination of dark actions and absurd, often humorous, commentary. Set in Havana in 1957, when Castro was still organizing his revolution in Oriente Province, and Mafia bosses Meyer Lansky and Santo Trafficante were sending suitcases full of money from their Havana gambling interests to Miami, the novel captures the last moments of Cuban high life, just before the revolution. Joaquin Porrada, a twenty-two year-old entertainment reporter, reads the teletype report of Mafia boss Anastasia's death in New York, and soon gets a tip that the gunshot death of the escaped Havana hippo was a belated warning to Anastasia from other Mafia dons--Anastasia was not being an "obedient hippopotamus." Filled with period details of Cuban night life, Havana's American Mafia, the corrupt officials of Fulgencio Batista's ironman rule, and the lives of ordinary Cubans and their families during this turbulent period, the novel follows Joaquin as he investigates the deaths of the hippo and Anastasia and decides to report on them. To get at the truth, he visits strippers and prostitutes; covers the action at Trafficante's club; meets George Raft, who is host at the Capri; travels to New York to investigate the recent Apalachin meeting of mobsters; falls in love with a one-armed woman maimed during a performance of "magic"; and eventually is warned, beaten, and threatened with death. Cuban author Mayra Montero's novel, ostensibly in the tradition of Cuban noir, is filled with broad humor, and the absurdities she highlights within the narrative provide a light, sometimes farcical, touch which keeps the reader amused, even as the blood is flowing. Joachin is hopelessly naïve at age twenty-two, but he is imaginative, and his fumbling attempts to investigate and write about crime in Havana do produce results, though not always the results he wants. Told alternately from his breezy point of view and that of Yolanda, his thirty-six-year-old, one-armed lover, who is also the mistress of Santo Trafficante, the novel is full of intrigue, overlapping characters, secret identities, and surprise twists. The numerous characters, many of whom have two or three aliases, are sometimes hard to track, but the action is lively and entertaining. Montero's characterizations of Joachin, his friends and family, combined with the story of Yolanda and her life and family, are well drawn and intriguing, though they sometimes veer off and have little to do with the violence among the Mafia dons. Extravagant and sometimes over-the-top in its details, this exuberant novel is a fast read, full of fun. n Mary Whipple

Thought she really captured the condition of Cuba of that time. Kept my interest all the way through. Excellent translation.

You know when you pick up a novel and read that the central character's initial thrust is an investigation into a hippopotamus murder in Havana which is linked to a Mafia rubout in New York and that character's main love is a one-armed circus assistant who is deeply in love with a man with leprosy who in turn turned out his own male Swedish lover after possibly infecting him....well, you've either got a turkey of a book or a terrific one. Fortunately, "Dancing to Almendra", a recent offering by author Mayra Montero, falls into the latter category. It is two hundred sixty pages of unadulterated joy. Set in 1957 months before the overthrow of Cuba's Batista, Montero invents a host of people that are incomplete, to say the least. But this is not Scarsdale and the color that Montero provides through her descriptions of the men and women who dot her book are second only to a powerful and well-paced narrative. Montero brings out the best in these flawed people, as they simply try to hold their lives together. I must admit that the beginning of "Dancing to Almendra" flies by with characters too many to keep track of sometimes, but the good news is that this book gets better with each passing page. She paints a portrait of the last days of Cuba before Castro, and how accurate that portrait really is doesn't matter. It surely contains many elements of a free-wheeling Cuba in its last free-wheeling days, much to the nostalgia (and perhaps anger) of those who don't or can't live there today. "Dancing to Almendra" is rich in every way. Too crazy for words perhaps is Montero, but she finds the words and then some. One would like to fly to Havana, sit back and have a couple of rums and read this wonderful book on its own turf. I highly recommend it along with thanks to the author for a much appreciated endeavor in writing it.

. We're suckers for novels that are set in Cuba during the "golden years." Havana in the 1950s was an exciting time, and in her new book, "Dancing to Almendra," Mayra Montero plunges us into Havana during the final weeks of Batista. The story begins with two deaths: the murder of mafia chieftain Umberto Anastasia and a hippopotamus at the Havana Zoo. A young entertainment reporter, Joaquín Porrata, gets assigned to the big story --the killing of the hippo.Porrata, who is definitely looking to move up in the journalism world, is a little under whelmed by his assignment -- until a zoo employee tells him about a strange link between the two killings. The paper he works for refuses to publish his story, and Porrata soon finds himself working for a rival newspaper. What follows is a journey of discovery, from Havana to upstate New York and back again. Along the way, Porrata befriends a zoo keeper with a strange obsession for George Raft, Yolanda, a one-armed circus performer; and several shady mafia characters. What is unique about this book is the counter story: Yolanda tells her own story in frequent interludes. On one side -- the present -- we have the plot driven and action packed narrative of Porrata. On the other, we have the slow meandering stream of Yolanda's life story, mostly remembrances of her past. Reading this book involves shifting from plainly written prose to stream-of-conscious poetry, but Montero manages to pull it off with aplomb. The original Spanish text has been lovingly translated by Edith Grossman. If you speak and read Spanish, you might want to tackle the original. However, for English readers this novel is an engaging read. Yes, you won't want to put it down.