Empress of the Splendid Season

This book gave me the perfect vision of what it's like to have your roots in one place and settle in a strange, foreign place. I loved the humor and simultaneous sadness in this book... It made me cry and laugh at the same time

this book rocks. i especially like the cover

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......

"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."

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.