Broken Paradise

by Cecilia Samartin

Book Overview

Cuba, 1956: Cousins Nora and Alicia are accustomed to living among Havana's privileged class -- but their lavish dinners, days at the beach, and extravagant dances come to an end after Castro's rise to power. Food becomes scarce, religion is forbidden, and disease runs rampant. Although Alicia stays behind while Nora emigrates to the United States, both of their identities are challenged as they try to adapt to the changes forced upon them. As the...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1416550399
• ISBN13: 9781416550396
• Release Date: February 2008
• Publisher: Atria Books
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.4" x 8.3"

Customer Reviews

As good as that other summer blockbuster...

I read this book immediately after finishing Hosseini's "A Thousand Splendid Suns" and can honestly say that I enjoyed it just as much. The tragedy that is Cuba is heartbreaking. I have a new understanding of the people who risk their lives and leave their beloved country to come to America. Samartin wrote a beautiful, lyrical, magical novel. Kudos to her!

An Impressive Literary Debut Devoted To The Cuban Revolution's Legacy

Cecilia Samartin's "Broken Paradise: A Novel" is one of the most impressive literary debuts in contemporary mainstream fiction that I've had the pleasure of reading. Its vivid, emotionally visceral tale of two cousins tragically separated during the 1959 Cuban Revolution's bloody, violent aftermath may be one of the most riveting explorations of humanity dealing with adversity since the original publication of Frank McCourt's best-selling memoir "Angela's Ashes". But I think most readers will identify more closely with Isabel Allende's splendid fiction, than Frank's superb literary memoir, and indeed, Cecilia Samartin is a fresh, newly minted Latin American writer worthy of comparison to Allende. Moreover, like Allende, Samartin has drawn extensively, from her own family history in telling such a beguiling, poignant tale. On a more personal note I am indebted to one of Samartin's editors, Amy Tannenbaum, for bringing her splendid literary debut to my attention. Samartin offers a lyrical, quite descriptive, portrayal of middle class life in Havana, Cuba in the years prior to the 1959 Cuban Revolution. Her elegant prose and storytelling craft is at its best chronicling the extended family to which Nora Garcia and her cousin Alicia belong. She is almost as successful in describing Nora's sudden, unexpected departure to - and her new life in - the United States, as well as the unspeakable calamities which beset her relatives immediately after Fidel Castro's public declaration of his keen interest in and enthusiastic embrace of Communism. Regrettably Samartin's impressive literary talents are greatly diminished in the final chapters of her engrossing novel, offering a structurally weak set of circumstances which will reunite Nora with her cousin Alicia, clearly demonstrating that Alicia's life has been far from idyllic in the new "worker's paradise" that is Fidel Castro's Cuba. However, her rather conventional means of resolving loose plot ends ultimately doesn't dissuade me from regarding Samartin's novel as an impressive literary debut from an important new voice in Latin American literature. Surely Samartin's magnificient, elegant prose and fine storytelling is destined to win her a devout band of fans, who will be as eager to read her next novel as I most certainly am. I have no doubt that hers will be regarded as one of the most important literary debuts of this year.

'Fear doesn't float...But courage ...not only floats, it flies.'

Cecilia Samartin blooms in the garden of new novelists as a rare and exotic species of flower, a gifted artist whose talent is mature, making it difficult to believe that BROKEN PARADISE is a first novel. Samartin bears watching: she seems to have the gifts of such authors as Isabel Allende and Carlos Eire among others - very fine company for any writer. Samartin offers a story of two cousins - Nora and Alicia - who were born into status and money in Cuba during the Batista years, witnessed the Revolution led by Fidel Castro, and suffered the ultimate results of the changes that revolution brought to the citizens of Cuba: Nora, the pragmatic one, escaped to the USA to live in Los Angeles with her parents while Alicia, the beautiful one, stayed behind, falling in love with a revolutionary black man Tony whom she married and gave birth to a blind child Lucinda, caring for her daughter after Tony's disillusionment with the revolution lead to his imprisonment. The two cousins continue their bonded relationship via letters and through these letters we are able to visualize the gradual crumbling of life and sustenance in Havana, the extremes to which the ever-optimistic Alicia must submit in order to maintain life, and the manner in which the two cousins reunite in Cuba years later, a time when the conditions of the current life in Cuba sadly separate them forever. Gabriel Garcia Marquez once wrote 'Life is not what one lived, but what one remembers and how one remembers it in order to recount it': Samartin's gift is the ability to invite us into the lives of her characters and allows us to create our own memories of what we have been told. Samartin's writing style is a dichotomy of tone. When she is telling the lives of the girls and their wondrously colorful families and extended families caught up in the paradise that was Cuba, her language is apropos to the tenor and rhythm and illusion of life as a child speaks it. When the Revolution changes (or 'breaks') the paradise, the maturing girls speak with the reality of adults, able to perceive the realities of the changed land and psyches of the people. This movement from the child's voice to the adult's narration is subtle but secure and adds enormously to the credibility of the novel's flow. 'Some people sell their bodies and others sell their souls' Nora tacitly observes as she returns to her beloved Cuba of the past to care for Alicia now fading from disease (presumably AIDS) she contracted in her only way of providing money for her imprisoned husband and blind child. The needs for sustaining life meet the needs for preserving soul and it is this pungent message that Samartin weaves through her novel. No matter what version of the 'change' in Cuba each reader may own, Cecilia Samartin invites us to revisit a paradise broken by a hopeful change from the Batista reign into the Castro communism. She paints her version with words in a way few authors can or have: Cuba is her native home,

A Heart's Longing for Home

"Our heartache settled like fine dust on every stick of furniture, every corner of tile. It blew, like a silent storm out of the windows and blended with the moisture of the sea that seemed to be weeping with us. We took pictures with our hearts and minds, and the little time we had expanded into an eternity of tomorrows we would never have." ~ pg. 86 Cecilia Samartin's debut novel is rich with a love of sea and sand. The sweet idyllic life of childhood sweeps the reader into the poetic writing and magical world of houses with windows facing the sea. The scents of sea breezes mingle with the taste of fresh guavas as two cousins emerge from their long summer to face a life of political turmoil. Alicia's romantic heart leads her to love and to remain in her country, while Nora escapes the conflict and struggles to find a new home in America. This meditation on the loss of home and the longings for lost innocence makes this a book of salt water and tears. Cecilia Samartin's impressive powers of description invite you into an intimacy where small pleasures and secrets cross the waters in letters and one woman must sell her body while the other is determined to keep her soul. Broken Paradise is a completely captivating journey into the heart of longing. ~The Rebecca Review

If you are searching for home, read this book

This is an amazing book, which at frst glance seems to tell the immigrant story - and it does that very well. But it's relevant for anyone who longs for "home", however defined. A great book, one that could not be put down - it will challenge your definitions of home and make your ask yourself just exactly what you long for in life.