Rating: 
Summary: Biographer Blinded by her Prejudices
Review: Yesterday I sent a very abbreviated form of this. Please replace it with this
one if possible.Wendy Gimbel has the imagination and flair for hyperbole to be a writer of
Harlequin romances. That she chose to write a pseudo-biography of three
generations of Cuban women, each given in her own way to emotional
obsessiveness, does not mean she can be trusted to provide anything like
an objective history, either of these women or of Cuba. Driven, it seems, by an intense hatred of Fidel Castro, Gimbel seems pruriently
focused on Naty Revuelta's long-ago liaison with Castro, and intent on
finding a crack in Revuelta's continuing loyalty to her former lover. Once she
has that, she can, and does, close her narrative. Gimbel seems incapable of mentioning the name of Fidel Castro without
qualifiying it with vilifying adjectives -- even a portrait of him as a toddler she
can't help but label as "petulant". Her tendency to amateur pschology runs rampant throughout the book as she
attempts to define, understand and finally pigeonhole each of the subjects of
her gossipy curiosity; but nowhere is it as extreme as in her pat statements
defining Castro's state of mind at various points in his shared history w/ Naty
Revuelta. For example, in relating a letter exchange between the two during
Castro's imprisonment, which foments a scandal when a partisan prison guard
switches and reroutes Castro's letters to his wife and to Naty, Gimbel brushes
off Fidel's necessarily guarded explanations to Naty with "The past recedes because
it's no longer useful to him." And so on throughout the book. She seems to
imagine herself within his mind, which to her has one dimension -- pure evil. This is not to argue that Fidel Castro does not or should not have his detractors
as well as his admirers (indeed, does a neutral attitude toward this man exist?)
But, for a book that claims to be a biographical documentary of four generations
of Cuban women, the subtext of the Gimbel's hatred of Castro is so strong as to
cast doubt on the veracity of her other observations, both of her presumed
subjects and of the island they inhabit. Even as a writer of fiction, Wendy Gimbel would do well to attempt a more
nuanced approach to individual emotional motivations, especially when the
characters she is "studying" (or creating, as the case may be) are in situations
complicated by potentially risky political and social compromise. Ms Gimbel has a highly developed and florid vocabulary, especially when
describing her characters' physical attributes, their fashion choices, and their
elegant dinnerware and furniture. Augmented by the dropping of names of
fashion designers and XVth century craftspeople, this seems to satisfy a need
to lend credibility to her presence among the aristocracy manqué to whom
she has ingratiated herself. She does cast a wee bone to the betterment of living conditions amongst
ordinary Cubans since the revolution, but only as a parenthetical aside, so
insignificant that I was unable to find it for a quote. And she does show a
sensitivity toward the feelings of the exile -- certainly relevant to the
multitudes of exiles and refugees in this conflicted world. One senses here a longing for the return of aristrocracy and all it portends
to the Cuba that Gimbel mourns. It's easy to see how she has missed the boat
entirely on what the Cuban revolution has been about to the millions of
Cubans who through the revolution's continuity -- and despite its
shortcomings -- have learned to experience such luxuries as food, shoes,
education and healthcare, and to whom Chanel and chenille are as remote
as snow.
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