Revolution Sunday

October 1, 2018
A 30-something poet's life unravels after she comes under the suspicions (and surveillance) of the Cuban state police.Renowned abroad, though rarely published in her native Cuba--and never before translated into English--Guerra opens her melancholic semiautobiographical novel with Cleo in bed, where she has remained, more or less uninterrupted, for the entirety of the year since her parents' suspicious deaths. Except for the family housekeeper, her only regular visitors are officers from the state secret police demanding answers to questions she doesn't understand. "Who were they, really?" she wonders. "There was something more than 'Papá' and 'Mamá' behind their names." What she doesn't yet know is just how much. An outcast in Havana--her writing, prizewinning abroad, seems only to raise further suspicions on the island--and rejected by friends living in exile, Cleo is alone (minus surveillance, she is always alone) when a famous Hollywood actor knocks on her door. He wants to make a film about her father's life, he explains. Her father, who, according to him, was executed the year she was born. According to him, in fact, none of what she believes to be the basic facts about her life--her father, her birthplace--are true. As in a dream, Gerónimo and Cleo fall into a passionate romance, both of them consumed by the project, interviewing retired military personnel who might have known her father, the "Cuban Rambo." But in a very different way, Gerónimo might not be exactly who he seems, either. The result, as translated by Obejas, is arresting, an explosive portrait of loneliness and isolation. Thick with the atmosphere of Cleo's Havana on the cusp of the Cuban thaw, the novel reads like the world's most poetic anxiety dream, vibrant and stifling.Demanding and unforgettable.

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October 8, 2018
Guerra’s English-language debut is the lyrical and potent narrative of Cleo, a young poet who becomes an outcast in her native Cuba following her parents’ death in a suspicious accident. During the depths of her depression, Cleo learns she has won a Spanish award for her inaugural book and must leave Cuba to claim the prize. Yet upon returning to Havana, Cleo endures a multitude of visits by police and discovers her work is not allowed to be distributed in Cuba. Cleo keeps to her home, trusting only Margara, her housekeeper. One day, famous actor Gerónimo Martines appears at her door and says he wants to make a documentary about Cleo’s father, a figure who opposed the government—or at least that’s what the reader is led to believe from the documents shown to Cleo. Cleo begins living with Gerónimo as her lover while they seek answers through interviews with people who knew her father. In turn, the police remove more and more items from Cleo’s home and delete her poems from her computer, forcing Margara to memorize them for preservation. Meanwhile, Cleo struggles to connect the parents she thought she knew with her mounting suspicions of not really knowing them. Guerra’s captivating tale is an intriguing depiction of art amid corruption, and a reminder of the power in a singular voice.

December 1, 2018

Limning contemporary Cuba and the loneliness that comes from not being accepted where one feels most at home, this autobiographical novel from Guerra (Everyone Leaves) features gifted young poet Cleo, mourning the death of her parents when a Spanish publisher announces that she has won a major prize. That's good news--except now she becomes a sort of accidental dissident, falling under the scrutiny of the state police (who visit so frequently she buys their favorite food), treated like a pariah by friends, yet scorned as a traitor by exiles when she travels abroad. Then a handsome movie star materializes, eager to play her father in a movie--and she learns a secret that upends her live. Cleo's voice is both punchy and pained (perfectly rendered by Obejas, herself a talented author), and her story humbles. She can only conclude, "I am my island." VERDICT Highly recommended for readers of both literary and popular fiction.

Copyright 2018 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2018
This lyrical and breathless novel from internationally best-selling Cuban novelist and poet Guerra (Everyone Leaves?, 2012) follows Cleo, a talented young poet from a prominent Cuban family. When her parents are killed in a horrific and suspicious car accident, the government's attention turns to Cleo. Her home is repeatedly raided, and her computer is cleared of her precious writings, which the state has deemed controversial. Worst of all, Cleo becomes an object of distrust in her own circle of friends. Then a mega-famous Hollywood star, Ger�nimo, shows up at Cleo's doorstep, asking for her help in making a film about her father's life. The two fall into a suffocatingly steamy romance that ends leaving Cleo with the realization that her parents and Ger�nimo himself are not the people she thought them to be. Guerra's novel is a riveting look into the lives of artists attempting free expression in censored regimes. The story ends with the inclusion of Cleo's weaponized poems, beautiful, heartbreaking testaments to her dissent.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)