Beautiful Maria of My Soul

March 8, 2010
In a sequel of sorts to The Mambo King Play Songs of Love
, Hijuelos examines the life of the muse of that novel as she moves from childhood to the fast lane in mid-20th century Cuba. María enchants whether she's dancing in clubs, appearing in advertisements, or walking the sweltering streets of Havana. Her story is one of fierce love, luscious sex, and otherworldly beauty, but also of heartbreak and hardness, as she carries painful memories of the death of her sister and her dear mother. The two main men in her life are Ignacio, a nefarious, strong-willed businessman who provides poor María with extravagant clothes and an apartment, and Nestor, a poor musician whom she loves passionately. Less prominent but still present is María's daughter, Teresa, and her growing up in America. Hijuelos's Havana is as much a full-fleshed character as María as it endures the rise of Castro and the mass exodus of Cubans to Miami in the 1960s. An intelligent and playful ending caps off a vivid story that should delight readers of The Mambo Kings
and enthrall those new to Hijuelos's imaginative and florid voice.

Starred review from April 1, 2010
A sequel to The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (1989) that sings with the sweet sensuality of its predecessor.

It has been two decades since Hijuelos made his popular breakthrough with The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, his Pulitzer Prize–winning novel about a band of Cuban migrs whose appearance on I Love Lucy turned a lovesick bolero into a minor classic. That song was titled"Beautiful Mar"a of My Soul," and here the novelist returns to tell the story of Mar"a, to render her as flesh and blood as well as exotic (and erotic) inspiration. Yes, she remains"the most dazzling woman in Cuba," one whose beauty inspires rapture in every man who encounters her, including the author:"If that mirror were a man, it would have been salivating; if it were a carpet it would have taken flight; if it had been a pile of wood it would have burst into flame, so lovely was Mar"a." Yet such beauty is bittersweet, for this is a woman who knows that her fate depends upon it and that inevitably it will fade. There is music in her romance with Nestor Castillo, the shy but handsome trumpeter who will spend years composing the song that pays tribute to her. Each may be the other's true love, but life has other designs, as the novel shows how the beautiful Mar"a chooses her destiny, rebels against it and makes peace with it. The prose combines the simplicity of a folk tale with the lyricism of a romantic balladeer and the depth of a philosopher, as it encompasses what Mar"a considers"her holy trinity: God, love, and death." Amid the political undercurrent of revolution in Cuba and with a recognition of the racial complexities of America, Mar"a finds a new life in Miami, where she raises a daughter whose perspective within the novel ultimately prevails. The result is a sequel that can be relished independently of the first volume while harmonizing with it.

More than worth the wait.

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April 15, 2010
Readers familiar with Hijuelos's Pulitzer Prize-winning blockbuster "The Mambo Kings Sing Songs of Love" (1989) will recognize this title: it's the name of the song that Nestor Castillo penned to his lost love, Mara. This latest novel explores that love in greater detail. Illiterate but beautiful Mara Garca escapes from her peasant surroundings in western Cuba in the hopes of making it big in Havana. There she meets small-time gangster Ignacio but becomes involved with Nestor; Ignacio gets rid of his rival by paying for the Castillo brothers' passage to New York. Later, after hearing the song written for her, Mara travels to New York to see Nestor; their steamy lovemaking on the last night of her trip is the culmination of the novel's latent eroticism. After Nestor is killed in a car crash, the novel turns briefly pedestrian, updating us about events in Mara's life. The last section, titled "Oh Yes That Book" (referring to "Mambo Kings"), fuses reality and fiction; Hijuelos himself makes an appearance, and the characters in this novel talk about those in the earlier one as if they were real. VERDICT In the end, this is every bit as good as "Mambo Kings" and may even pique interest in the earlier work for those who don't know it. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 3/15/10.]Lawrence Olszewski, OCLC Lib., Dublin, OH

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from April 15, 2010
Hijuelos returns to his 1990 Pulitzer Prize winner, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, but this time he tells the story from the point of view of Maria, the young Cuban woman with whom Nestor Castillo fell in love and about whom he wrote the Mambo Kings hit bolero, Beautiful Maria of My Soul. Maria is mostly offstage in the first book, remaining in Cuba after the Castillo brothers immigrate to New York and find success as the Mambo Kings. Here we learn that while the stunningly beautiful Maria, a featured dancer in Havanas pre-Castro nightclubs, did indeed dump Nestor, prompting his exit for New York, she, like him, spent the rest of her life remembering their time together. Yes, it is a story of grand passion found, lost, and mourned, but it is also the story of a young, illiterate girl escaping a life of rural poverty and making a career for herself in the city. Nobody writes sex scenes like Hijuelosgraphic and poetic at once, a symphony of lush language, both sweaty and transcendentbut he brings the same passion to his descriptions of Maria learning to read (the way the letters of the alphabet arranged themselves in words and began to follow her everywhere). The novel cools a little when Maria immigrates to Miami, but the story of Maria the mother and the survivor provides a fitting finale to her storys narrative arc. As with Madame Bovary, the life force fills Marias passionate soul, but she also craves security (Who will take care of me?), and that hardheadedness is both her salvation and her tragedy. To fully appreciate this novels wondrous language and its multifaceted story, it needs to be read in tandem with Mambo Kings; to do otherwise would be like listening to a symphony through only one speaker.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)