Rating: 
Summary: 100% Accurate
Review: The most accurate picture of Havana in the 90's. Highly recommended!
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting Story but ...
Review: This story has substance but lacks passion and details. I am Cuban and read anything and everything Cuban,thus why I read this book. To compare to a vibrant,passionate book, check out a little Spanish/English all-Cuban book (Cuban characters,Cuban author, Cuban illustrator, Cuban story, set in Little Havana's Cuban Calle Ocho Festival) titled,DRUM,CHAVI, DRUM!/TOCA,CHAVI,TOCA! If you have children or if you're a book collector,like myself, you will note a significant difference in passion even when comparing a picturebook to DIARIES...I do recommend this book for its contents and I thank the author for bringing it to our attention.
Rating: 
Summary: Bleech!
Review: Truly is what it says it is: An American housewife whines about not getting fresh whatever daily from the servants. She could visit the south side of Chicago and whine, sans servants. Her Martha Stewart sensibilities are out of place in a poor country struggling with social issues, quite successfully, I would add, despite North America's stupid blockade.
Needless to say, this book was an aggravation and disrespectful of another place and culture.
Rating:
Summary: Dull
Review: Unfortunately this is one of those books that I stuggled to get to the end of. I can just picture Isadora receiving notice that they were going to Cuba and thinking to herself "great! I can write a book and try and profit from it". My discomfort started when she kept referring to people as an X-----ian, there seemed to be no apparent reason or explanation for this paranoia and it continued throughout the entire book. By the end of it my cheeks burned with annoyance.
I can only imagine the extent of the damage that she has caused the Cuban tourist industry. The book seems to be paragraph after paragraph of how appalling things are in Cuba and how little people have. Again, what was her reasoning for detailing all of this? And all with apparently such little gusto.
On the whole though, the book is rather dull, switching from one minor detail or rather dull occurrence, to another. For example, taking the cat to the VET, or the daughter to dance classes.
One aspect of the book does deserve a mention for it's talent. The ability to write about a dinner with Fidel Castro with such little detail or interest.
I'm a bit worried that Isadora will move somewhere else and write another book about middle class life abroad with her husband.
Rating: 
Summary: Some insights from an outsider...
Review: What is it about this magical island and its magical people that continues to enchant the world. This most European of all Latin nations, paradoxically also its most American-like and its most African - a grim Communist jail with eloquent flashes of joy and laughter amidst the misery of a repressed society. The author allows us to see Cuba through a foreigner's eyes, and while her lack of "Cubanosity" creates some odd reading at times, her Puritan observations do deliver some insight into this poor island with its long history of repression, bloody dictatorships and a wonderful people with worldly charms and vices. We discover Cuban pride, elegance, racism, poverty and even a bit about Fidel Castro. We read about what unites some Cubans and about the subtle racism of Cuban society, still run mostly by white Cubans in theoretically an equal society of this Communist dinosaur. The book succeeds in letting us observe Cuba through the eyes of a non-Cuban, and even in its failures, allows us to recognize what are hopefully the last gasps of a repressive society hopefully in its death gasps.
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