Rating: 
Summary: disappointing -- mediocre at best
Review: Despite the juicy plot summary and book jacket, this book is not very special. If you want a really good Cuban book, try The Lonely Crossing of Juan Cabrera, a real classic. This book aspires to greatness but does little more than catch a bit of the mood of Cuba of a different era. The relationships are not well developed, the plot is a mish-mash of convoluted events and the writing is uneven. I'm not trying to pick on the author, but for the big hardcover release this book has, one would expect it be have some more literary qualities. The writing is mediocre at best. Even an interesting relationship like the one with the narrator's friend Paula is not well developed. An okay first effort, but she has a ways to go before reaching her groove.
Rating:
Summary: disappointing -- mediocre at best
Review: Despite the juicy plot summary and book jacket, this book is not very special. If you want a really good Cuban book, try The Lonely Crossing of Juan Cabrera, a real classic. This book aspires to greatness but does little more than catch a bit of the mood of Cuba of a different era. The relationships are not well developed, the plot is a mish-mash of convoluted events and the writing is uneven. I'm not trying to pick on the author, but for the big hardcover release this book has, one would expect it be have some more literary qualities. The writing is mediocre at best. Even an interesting relationship like the one with the narrator's friend Paula is not well developed. An okay first effort, but she has a ways to go before reaching her groove.
Rating: 
Summary: A Beautiful Book
Review: I absolutely loved this book. Both the horror and beauty of Cuba come alive under the deft strokes of Lamazares' pen. She fills her fictive world with people who want something and move passionately in their attempts to get it. It is funny and sad, terribly sad. This is a great read that is destined to become a classic.
Rating:
Summary: A Beautiful Book
Review: I absolutely loved this book. Both the horror and beauty of Cuba come alive under the deft strokes of Lamazares' pen. She fills her fictive world with people who want something and move passionately in their attempts to get it. It is funny and sad, terribly sad. This is a great read that is destined to become a classic.
Rating:
Summary: An island in the wind
Review: I found myself emotionally enwrapped in this book, a first novel that mostly lives in Cuba. It is told by a girl named Tanya, who exists in a struggle with her mother, a woman who is a painfully ambitious, helpless dreamer, who hates to work, who hates this world of drudgery, and who seeks always to defiantly escape. Within the novel, the mother grows into a giant figure, huge like the island of Cuba itself. Tanya attempts to evade her, but her mother's too giant.I found this mother a doomed, sexy puzzle; I began to share Tanya's dirty frustration and fury. The book has very alert politics; as I read it, I thought "this may be the most objective book ever written about Cuba." The petty, almost benign bureaucracy that runs this "revolution" is lovable, sort of -- not as gruesome as the menacing Russians. An island will always have a more attractive nationalism than an empire. But Cuba is also squalid and obtuse. Has anyone else written so well about the disappointment of an immigrant who leaves a difficult, miserable life for the featureless prosperity of Miami? And Tanya's sexual discoveries, at age 15, are mysterious and almost botanical. [Also I always wondered what the adherents of Santeria intuit, and sense.] The book is written in very clear, spare prose, and some of the end-lines of the chapters are formidable and sharp, like the sound of a glass cracking.
Rating:
Summary: An island in the wind
Review: I found myself emotionally enwrapped in this book, a first novel that mostly lives in Cuba. It is told by a girl named Tanya, who exists in a struggle with her mother, a woman who is a painfully ambitious, helpless dreamer, who hates to work, who hates this world of drudgery, and who seeks always to defiantly escape. Within the novel, the mother grows into a giant figure, huge like the island of Cuba itself. Tanya attempts to evade her, but her mother's too giant. I found this mother a doomed, sexy puzzle; I began to share Tanya's dirty frustration and fury. The book has very alert politics; as I read it, I thought "this may be the most objective book ever written about Cuba." The petty, almost benign bureaucracy that runs this "revolution" is lovable, sort of -- not as gruesome as the menacing Russians. An island will always have a more attractive nationalism than an empire. But Cuba is also squalid and obtuse. Has anyone else written so well about the disappointment of an immigrant who leaves a difficult, miserable life for the featureless prosperity of Miami? And Tanya's sexual discoveries, at age 15, are mysterious and almost botanical. [Also I always wondered what the adherents of Santeria intuit, and sense.] The book is written in very clear, spare prose, and some of the end-lines of the chapters are formidable and sharp, like the sound of a glass cracking.
Rating:
Summary: Sweet, but not too sweet
Review: The Sugar Island by Ivonne Lamazares captivated me from the first page. The narrator, Tanya, is the best adolescent female since Member of the Wedding and every bit as memorable.Her relationship with her slippery-hearted mother made me laugh and cry and wince with the truth of it. Tanya is independent of her mother and yet fearful of being without her, idealistic enough to be angry at her mother's shabby choices and guilty about her own feeling that she has betrayed her mother. As a story about a mother whose expressed motive is to take her children from Cuba to a better life in the U.S., this novel is both timely and eternal. Tanya's mother has motives that are slippery and suspect enough to make her real and lovable (to the reader as well as Tanya) if not always admirable and believable. As I read The Sugar Island, I kept thinking it was wonderfully visual and, with its vivid and varied characters, would make a great movie. I would only hope that a movie could capture Lamazares' language which is exquisite. She is a poet, and her care with language brings forth delicious images and metaphors which will stay with me forever. This book is relatively short, but it has enough meat (not just enough sugar) for long pondering and discussion of issues of parent/child relationships, effects of Communism on family life and economic structure, friendship, sexual awakening, escape, freedom, and more.
Rating:
Summary: Sweet, but not too sweet
Review: The Sugar Island by Ivonne Lamazares captivated me from the first page. The narrator, Tanya, is the best adolescent female since Member of the Wedding and every bit as memorable.Her relationship with her slippery-hearted mother made me laugh and cry and wince with the truth of it. Tanya is independent of her mother and yet fearful of being without her, idealistic enough to be angry at her mother's shabby choices and guilty about her own feeling that she has betrayed her mother. As a story about a mother whose expressed motive is to take her children from Cuba to a better life in the U.S., this novel is both timely and eternal. Tanya's mother has motives that are slippery and suspect enough to make her real and lovable (to the reader as well as Tanya) if not always admirable and believable. As I read The Sugar Island, I kept thinking it was wonderfully visual and, with its vivid and varied characters, would make a great movie. I would only hope that a movie could capture Lamazares' language which is exquisite. She is a poet, and her care with language brings forth delicious images and metaphors which will stay with me forever. This book is relatively short, but it has enough meat (not just enough sugar) for long pondering and discussion of issues of parent/child relationships, effects of Communism on family life and economic structure, friendship, sexual awakening, escape, freedom, and more.
Rating:
Summary: Sometimes Mother isn't always right
Review: The Sugar Island is filled with history, culture and adventure. Young Tanya's life moves like a speeding train across the country of Cuba, then across the Atlantic Ocean and finally finding personal freedom in America. She tries hard to understand her mother's beliefs regarding the Revolution but she knows in her heart and mind that life has to be much better than what she is forced to be around. The Sugar Island give a wonderful view of life in both rural and urban Cuba after Castro took over. And you see first hand how many people who had supported Castro in the beginning was double-crossed in the end.
Rating:
Summary: Sometimes Mother isn't always right
Review: The Sugar Island is filled with history, culture and adventure. Young Tanya's life moves like a speeding train across the country of Cuba, then across the Atlantic Ocean and finally finding personal freedom in America. She tries hard to understand her mother's beliefs regarding the Revolution but she knows in her heart and mind that life has to be much better than what she is forced to be around. The Sugar Island give a wonderful view of life in both rural and urban Cuba after Castro took over. And you see first hand how many people who had supported Castro in the beginning was double-crossed in the end.
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