general

On January 1, 1959, Fidel Castro ousted Batista from Cuba and wrested eight-year-old Carlos Eire from his life of privileged ease. As a son of the upper class, Carlos had attended the best private schools and frolicked with his brother on clear Cuban beaches under a lemon sky. Three years later, countless public executions and social anarchy convinced his parents to send the boys to the United States. Carlos was one of the 14,000 children airlifted out of Cuba to an uncertain future in America.

Despite the poverty and loneliness that awaited him in Florida, Carlos went on to achieve success as a professor at Yale University. Waiting for Snow in Havana is his cathartic tale of Cuban life before and after its Glorious Revolution. The book's blatant honesty is sometimes painful to read, but its prosaic beauty left me breathless. There is a disjointed quality to the writing that is somehow appropriate here: a hilarious tale of neighborhood boys trying to send a lizard into outer space strapped to a bottle rocket might introduce a tirade against the author's perverted adopted brother, who tormented the young boy for years with sexual advances. He tells of his cousin's death before a firing squad and his uncle's retreat into madness after languishing in one of Fidel's many prisons, then goes on to paint exquisite pictures of tangerine sunsets and selfless love.

Lizards. They crop up again and again, personifying evil. The book is a lyric commentary on the struggle of evil against God's creation. Lush Cuba is ravaged by a cruel overlord. The same ocean that teems with heart-stoppingly beautiful parrot fish houses sharks as well. Carlos' loving father is marred by the delusion, the certainty, that he is the reincarnation of King Louis XVI. He chooses his wife because he is convinced she was once Marie Antoinette. So great is his fantasy that he brings home a street urchin, whom he recognizes as the reincarnation of the French dauphin, and adopts him, thus innocently introducing a cruel pervert into his happy family. That he became a Christian believer despite the ugliness of his life is a triumph of God's grace. But believe he does, although his writing sometimes shocks my sensibilities. (The frequent use of Christ's name as a literary device, for example, offended me.) God works in mysterious ways, and His method of reaching a Cuban Catholic must surely be unlike His wooing of a Bible-Belt Protestant. It follows, then, that Dr. Eire's portrayal of God's love would necessarily be different from mine. Who am I to say that mine is better, despite his profanity? Apparently others in the Christian community agree with me; I actually read this book at the recommendation of a writer in Christianity Today, who named it among his top ten favorites of 2003. It is now a favorite of mine.

Carlos Eire has created a memorable record of his childhood in Havana writng beautifully of his lovely surroundings populated by colorful characters, many of them related to him. The shadow of impending doom in the shape of Fidel's revolution slowly but relentlessly advances over this idylic scene and ultimately results in his secure world and his family being torn apart.
This book brilliantly combines a distinctly Cuban coming of age tale with a view into Cuba at the time of the revolution as experienced through the eyes of a comfortable middle class child.
Eire's writing is so evocative of the feelings he associates with the various episodes in his early life that the reader is drawn into his experience in a very visceral way.
I thought this book was beautifully written and at times emotionally wrenching. A wonderful eye-opening read . Highest reccomendation.

This is a misty-eyed memoir of an egoistical man who had a very privileged childhood. Because that idealized world was sundered, he believes he has a deeper take on suffering and displacement and he asks the reader to sympathize with his plight and along the way, to blame it all on Castro. The writing is precious, almost cloyingly so--one would expect a historian to be more careful of his language. If the Cuba he remembers is a paradise lost, then he needs to move on. Cuba has survived well enough without him.