2.5
Beautiful Maria of My Soul
ByPublisher Description
In
, María is the great Cuban beauty who stole musician Nestor Castillo's heart and broke it, inspiring him to write the Mambo Kings' biggest hit, 'Beautiful María of My Soul.'" Now in her sixties, María García y Cifuentes is the lady behind the song, living as an exile in Miami. But while she left Cuba decades ago, she has never forgotten Nestor.
We now see the Mambo Kings' story through Maria's eyes—and as she thinks back to her days and nights in Havana, an entirely new perspective on the story unfolds. We meet her as an illiterate young woman with unspeakable, head-turning beauty who meets and falls in love with Nestor in Havana, but ultimately chooses to stay involved with a cruel, wealthy lover.
When the Cuban Revolution intervenes, Maria and her daughter seek refuge in Miami. And as she finds community with other Cuban women and begins to take lessons at a local college, Maria finally goes from muse to the writer of her own story.
is a stunning act of reinvention, and another contemporary classic from an extraordinarily talented writer.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesBeautiful Maria of My Soul Reviews
2.5
Dim D
Created almost 5 years agoShare
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Poocha
Created about 5 years agoShare
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“Abandoned this book less than halfway through, after struggling with it for months. The unrelenting male gaze fixated on the protagonist's breasts and buttocks, the glorification of obviously stalker behaviour as some kind of pure, true love, the bewildering & gratuitous use of Spanish words in lines of dialogue (because obviously in the universe of this books the characters - all Cubans in Havana - are speaking to each other in Spanish, even if we're reading them in English) - all very, very nauseating.”
KaliHecate
Created about 5 years agoShare
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Bierka
Created over 6 years agoShare
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Kathleen Joyce
Created almost 9 years agoShare
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“Hard to believe this is the work of writer whose other work I have enjoyed. The one-dimensional title character, the plodding story, the repetitive cliche in describing places, foods, and even music... disappointed.”
About Oscar Hijuelos
, a native New Yorker and the son of Cuban immigrants, was a Pulitzer Prize-winning author of nine novels and a memoir and a recipient of the Rome Prize awarded by The American Academy of Arts and Letters. He also received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. He became the first Latino winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1990 for his international bestseller
and his novels have been translated into more than 40 languages.
is an author and educator from Jamestown, New York. She studied Spanish literature and linguistics at the College of Wooster and got her MA in Hispanic literature from Indiana University. Lori has taught at different universities, like Duke, and she's the editor of amazing books for kids and teens, such as
, and
. She lives in the bustling city of New York.
Other books by Oscar Hijuelos
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