Firefly

March 25, 2013
Cuban author Sarduy's visceral language is in full force throughout this translation of his first novel. This phantasmagoric bildungsroman opens with the freakish protagonist, Firefly, poisoning his entire family during a hurricane. Displaced and orphaned, he trawls the solitary dregs of a labyrinthine Cuban metropolis before being taken in by a charity house benefactress. There Firefly meets Ada, a fellow orphan who awakens his amorous desire, and begins shedding his naivete in a seedy urban underbelly teaming with slave auctions, bordellos, and beer halls; witnessing the horrors of sex trafficking in a secret subterranean lair. As Firefly pursues Ada, he must also pull her from the ravages of this diabolic industry running the city. Is the doctor who knows of his crimes tailing him or is this merely paranoia brought on by Firefly's guilty conscience? Sarduy creates a vertiginous account of urban decay, relishing in the moral ambiguity of his characters, the ethical sewage of humanity. At times Sarduy's descent to the lowest tier of human filth and his excessive jubilation of disgust is delivered with a heavy hand. However, Sarduy's ludic novel is a rowdy carnival ride through the grime of city life in a fantastically depicted Cuba.

January 1, 2013
The penultimate novel by Cuban author Sarduy (Cobra, 1972, etc.). This book would seem to be a translator's nightmare, but Fried has maintained the dark beauty and mystery of the work, originally published three years before the author's death from AIDS in 1993. Sarduy's circuslike world takes some getting used to. His hero, Firefly, is a young boy growing up in pre-Castro Cuba; in a David Lynch-ian touch, his name relates to his bald and oversized head. The narrative takes the first of many surreal turns in the first chapter, when Firefly puts rat poison in his family's tea to keep them from noticing his fear in a thunderstorm. From there, the story shifts to the charity house where Firefly spends the rest of his youth, under the watch of the conjurer Munificence. His experiences are both disturbing and sensually charged. He watches while Ada, the woman he loves, is ritually bathed in lime juice and then pierced through the ears. His own sexual initiation occurs at the hands of two forceful, oversized creatures of uncertain gender. His first cigar is another kind of initiation, one that sends Firefly into a dream world. The story quickly loses any linear coherence it has, but the flow of images is dazzling and ultimately quite haunting. In the final chapter, Firefly's world is now a wasteland, and he is racked with nausea. The closing image returns to the first chapter's poison episode and is likely the author's vision of Cuba to come: The innocence is now gone, and the violent impulses remain. Rich poetry, elusive plotting and layered images make for an interesting read.

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February 15, 2013

After Fidel Castro came to power, Sarduy (1937-93) left Cuba to study in Paris, where he remained for the rest of his life. His intellectual influences are French (Genet, Huysmans, Barthes) and his novels (Colibri; Cobra) depict the ordinary in richly sensual language. Originally published in 1990, this work is a phantasmagoria of a lush and sinister long-gone Cuba dancing on the outer fringes of magical realism. After Firefly, a scrawny kid with a huge head, fakes his death from rat poison, he is treated at the provincial hospital by Doctors Gator and Isidro. Gator the herbalist wears shoes made of his own skin, and his obese partner, Isidro, practices the "Frenchified" art of dissection. Once Firefly escapes their clutches, he falls in love with Ada, a beautiful redhead who attends a charity school. VERDICT Throughout the narrative, readers will find asynchronous references to the brawny cargo of the African slave trade intended to boost Cuba's nascent sugar industry. But plot is subsidiary to language and Sarduy's wondrous manipulation of it makes the experience a rewarding one for those who commit to savoring it.--Jack Shreve, Chicago

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