Ruins

December 15, 2008
In 1994 Havana, times are hard: for maladroitly named Usnavy and his family, home is one windowless, sparsely furnished room, and rationing is so tight that “pieces of a blanket... beaten and marinated in spices and a little beef broth” pass for sandwich meat. When not managing the local bodega or playing dominoes with childhood friends, earnest Usnavy tries to keep his out-of-work wife and 14-year-old daughter from despair and disillusionment. His one treasure, as precious as his mother's legacy, is a “most extraordinary lamp… of multicolor stained glass and shaped like an oversized dome.” Around this lamp (a genuine Tiffany?), poet and novelist Obejas spins a mystery with political ramifications. Keeping within the tight frame of Usnavy's day-to-day life, Obejas confronts the ruin of Cuba; the fate of those who escape to the States, and those who remain; and broad issues of religious and sexual identity. With the deft and evocative detail of a poet's, Obejas's prose is as illuminating and honest as her struggling protagonist.

February 15, 2009
This superb novel by Cuban-born writer and poet Obejas ("Memory Mambo") follows the story of Usnavy, who, despite a bleak childhood in a small provincial city near Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, achieves his rightful place in the world as a standard bearer for Castro and Che after the 1959 revolution. However, this all changes in 1994, when the Cuban government permits any and all to leave Cuba by any and all means. Usnavy's best friend leaves without a word, and suddenly the dollar becomes the currency for all goods necessary to his wife and daughterand to himself. In the midst of this turmoil, Usnavy's only constant is his pride in the oversized stained-glass lamp he inherited from his mother, and for the first time he becomes curious about its origins. He seeks out knowledge from the aptly named Virgilio, a restorer of old glass lamps, and is led through the Dantean mazes of Havana and a secret family history. Although initially confusing, Obejas's writing style effectively mimics the plot, as the author navigates a maze of histories and ethnicities. Recommended for larger public and all academic library collections.Mary Margaret Benson, Linfield Coll. Lib., McMinnville, OR

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from January 1, 2009
A fatherless child named in honor of the big U.S. Navy ships in Guantnamo Bay, Usnavy, weary and destitute at 54 in 1994, still believes fervently in Cubas Communist mission even though his neighbors are fleeing to the U.S. under the cover of darkness on anything that will float. Usnavy works, navigates state bureaucracy, plays dominos in the square with his ribald buddies, and basks in the radiance of his only treasure, an opulent, Tiffany-like stained-glass lamp. A rare object of beauty, an embodiment of light and transcendence, it links humble and honest Usnavy to a hidden facet of Cuban history, and to the freer world of creativity and its shadow side of greed and desperation, deception and secret justice. Following the substantial Days of Awe (2001), prizewinning, ever-innovative Cuban American writer Obejas evinces a new, focused lyricism as she penetrates to the very heart of the Cuban paradox in a story as pared down and intense as its narrators life. Inlaid with images of transformation, this Havana story in the Hemingway mode illuminates the tragedies and resiliency of a twilight land caught in the spell of a failed dream and portrays with exquisite sensitivity a man reaching toward the light.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)