3.5
A Greek Love
ByPublisher Description
For readers of Isabel Allende, Gabriela Garcia, and Julia Alvarez, the story of a woman who must fight for her love and her child in a Cuba suffocated by oppression
A free spirit who spends time near the port of Havana, where her friend Osiris is known as the “Greek sailormen's whore,” teenager Zé becomes pregnant after a brief love affair with a captain's son her age. By the time she realizes her condition, the ship has left and the boy is gone. In her father's Cuba, an unwed teenage mother is a source of scandal and shame and a threat to his ambitions in the Party. He disowns her and brutally throws her out of her home. Led by her mother, she leaves the city for refuge in Matanzas, a university town rich in Afro-Cuban culture, where her mother's sister, a music scholar, lives and where she will raise her child mentored by these three older women—aunt, mother, and Osiris.
Years later, Zé’s son, Petros, has become a world-class musician bridging Cuban and Greek traditions, while Zé has become a scholar herself. When a recording executive invites Petros to give concerts in Greece, Zé seeks permission from the authorities to leave the island and accompany him. Secretly—a secret they guard from the authorities and her father, now a Party stalwart—they both nourish the hope of somehow finding Petros’s father and Zé’s one great, lost love.
With echoes of the breakout novel that made Zoé Valdés an international literary star, A Greek Love is a tale of passion, endurance, and hope—and a woman's tenacious love.
A free spirit who spends time near the port of Havana, where her friend Osiris is known as the “Greek sailormen's whore,” teenager Zé becomes pregnant after a brief love affair with a captain's son her age. By the time she realizes her condition, the ship has left and the boy is gone. In her father's Cuba, an unwed teenage mother is a source of scandal and shame and a threat to his ambitions in the Party. He disowns her and brutally throws her out of her home. Led by her mother, she leaves the city for refuge in Matanzas, a university town rich in Afro-Cuban culture, where her mother's sister, a music scholar, lives and where she will raise her child mentored by these three older women—aunt, mother, and Osiris.
Years later, Zé’s son, Petros, has become a world-class musician bridging Cuban and Greek traditions, while Zé has become a scholar herself. When a recording executive invites Petros to give concerts in Greece, Zé seeks permission from the authorities to leave the island and accompany him. Secretly—a secret they guard from the authorities and her father, now a Party stalwart—they both nourish the hope of somehow finding Petros’s father and Zé’s one great, lost love.
With echoes of the breakout novel that made Zoé Valdés an international literary star, A Greek Love is a tale of passion, endurance, and hope—and a woman's tenacious love.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesA Greek Love Reviews
3.5
“Whew, a short read full of big feelings! This book was so beautifully written with evocative language bordering on poetic at times. It shines a light on a time and place I had no prior exposure to, and tells a story through a very realistic lens that captures the depths of emotion and thoughts. A study in the human experience, and the complexities and disappointments it can hold. There’s sadness woven throughout the story, but also speaks to the strength of Ze as a woman growing up in Cuba and a mother. I finished the last chapter with a heavy heart, but that doesn’t tarnish the quality of the writing or storytelling of the is piece.”“Despite the title, this is less of a love story and more a brief view into Cuba, with a bit of Greek/Cuban relations thrown in. The story highlights the strength and growth that can be gained if women support one another. It is a short read, which brings. a teenager in Cuba’s “gray years” who ends up pregnant by a Greek sailor. Ranging from an abusive father to being a single mother and persevering through invisibility, though it lacked more information of Zé’s story.”
“I received this eARC from NetGalley and the publisher in return for an honest review.
This is neither a love story or a novel: at least it’s not a romantic love story. It is too short to be a novel; it’s a novella.
The length hinders what could have been a fascinating story. A young, single mother with an extended and found family with Cuban and Greek locations, and the political component all had potential. But it was told instead of developing a full, complex story, which also shortchanged what could have been an impactful ending: the only part that was really played out across the pages rather than being told.”
“In many ways, very beautifully written. In others, stilted dialogue that’s more focus on exposition than something natural — though, I don’t know if that’s a translation issue, as some of the areas that lacked flow or weren’t as lyrical seemed due to a difficult translation.”
About Zoé Valdés
Zoé Valdés was born in Cuba in 1959 and has lived in exile in France since 1995. Once dubbed "the Madonna of Cuban literature," she is the acclaimed author of several novels, including Yocandra in the Paradise of Nada and I Gave You All I Had, both published by Arcade. Besides being awarded the 2013 Azorín Prize for The Weeping Woman, she has won the Planeta Prize and the Premio de Novela Ciudad de Torrevieja. She received the Tres Llaves (Three Keys) to the city of Miami in 2001. She lives in Paris.
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