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Rating: 
Summary: Flawed, but poignant
Review: "Havana Dreams" was written as a memoir, Wendy Gimbel's attempt to capture the romance of Cuba in its heyday and the heartbreak of Cuba today. The premise is great, but the execution doesn't hold up as well. Gimbel is a strong writer, and her narrative is evocative and moving, but she organized her material in the wrong way. Instead of a memoir, she should have just written about someone else. What's really interesting here is the story of Fidel Castro's lover Naty, her mother Dona Natica, and Naty and Castro's daughter Alina. It's got everything: passion, intrigue, mystery, and betrayal. If Gimbel had concentrated on Naty and the Revuelta family, the book would have been much stronger. For example, by inserting her own maternal abandonment issues into Naty's story, she weakened the book overall. On the other hand, it can't have been easy to try to pull the truth out of these women who each wanted to control their stories, none of whom were above changing details to make themselves (Dona Natica and Alina) or Castro (Naty) more sympathetic or more impressive. Although flawed, "Havana Dreams" is a poignant, romantic tale, much like that of Cuba itself.
Rating:
Summary: Flawed, but poignant
Review: "Havana Dreams" was written as a memoir, Wendy Gimbel's attempt to capture the romance of Cuba in its heyday and the heartbreak of Cuba today. The premise is great, but the execution doesn't hold up as well. Gimbel is a strong writer, and her narrative is evocative and moving, but she organized her material in the wrong way. Instead of a memoir, she should have just written about someone else. What's really interesting here is the story of Fidel Castro's lover Naty, her mother Dona Natica, and Naty and Castro's daughter Alina. It's got everything: passion, intrigue, mystery, and betrayal. If Gimbel had concentrated on Naty and the Revuelta family, the book would have been much stronger. For example, by inserting her own maternal abandonment issues into Naty's story, she weakened the book overall. On the other hand, it can't have been easy to try to pull the truth out of these women who each wanted to control their stories, none of whom were above changing details to make themselves (Dona Natica and Alina) or Castro (Naty) more sympathetic or more impressive. Although flawed, "Havana Dreams" is a poignant, romantic tale, much like that of Cuba itself.
Rating: 
Summary: A great story.
Review: A great story written by a great pen and a great heart.
Rating: 
Summary: Castro's Rise To Power Through a Family's Eyes
Review: An excellent first hand account of the lives of people in an area in which time has stood still. Makes one realize why we need to support a democratic society but not compromise on the traditions and values of our respective cultures. This novel has tremendous insight into the Cuban heritage and the influence that communism and democracy has had on the civilization of a nation. Totally engrossing, realistic and awe inspiring. I strongly recommend Ms. Gimbel's novel to all who want to gain a greater understanding of multi-national traditions and the integrations of socities.
Rating:
Summary: PORTRAIT OF A CUBAN FAMILY...
Review: Hailed by the New York Times as a Notable Book of the Year when it was first released, this is a lyrically written chronicle of Cuba as seen through the eyes of the women of a prominent, yet notorious, Cuban family. It is also an elegant narrative of Cuba's past and its present, its good and its bad. Its genesis is the Cuban-American author's own memories of a pre-Castro Cuba of the nineteen forties and fifties, still steeped in its colonial miasma, redolent of family, traditions, and a certain indolence that was reserved for those who lived the life of patrones. I was drawn to this book, as I am also a Cuban-American, and the author's memories in many ways are mine, as well.
I was also intrigued by the intimate portrait of Castro's one time mistress, Naty Revuelta, and the history of her family as set against the backdrop of Cuba. I was interested in how her illicit relationship with a young, fiery revolutionary by the name of Fidel Castro would forever change her life and that of her family. Her family's fortunes and misfortunes parallel those of Cuba itself. Castro's own relationship with his island country would forever change Cuba also, turning it from a colonial paradise for the rich and well-to-do into a crumbling relic from the past, offspring of the mating between heady and romantic revolutionary rhetoric and reality.
Engrossing and memorable in its telling, the author paints a poignant, and fully engaging portrait of Naty, her mother, Dona Natica, a Batista era socialite, and Naty's two daughters, Alina and Nina, one of whom is the fruit of Naty's brief intimate relationship with Castro, the other the daughter of her cuckolded husband. Both her daughters are now expatriates, living in the United States. The story of Naty's family is presented in all its heartbreak and is artfully drawn against the grand panorama of what is modern Cuban history. This is a masterful and luminous book that will appeal to those with an interest in Cuba, as well as to those who enjoy a well-written memoir, steeped in historical context. Bravo!
Rating:
Summary: Cuban Dreams--Myth or Reality
Review: Havana Dreams scans the 20th century in the unforgettable account of a Cuban family, descended from aristocrats, who live the high life before Fidel, and the heartbreak after. This is the story of Naty Revuelta, and four generations of Cuban women. In 1952, Naty met Fidel Castro, a young revolutionary, and although she was married, began a passionate affair with him that resulted in his unrecognized daughter and his rejection of her mother. Despite the large number of friends and family who fled Cuba, including Naty's husband, a doctor and their daughter, Nina, when Fidel took over, Naty stayed with her mother, Dona Natica and her daughter by Fidel, Alina, in hopes that she and Fidel would eventually be together. This is the story of her hopes and dreams, as well as the heartbreak of lost love and a disentegrating society. We trace the lives of Naty's daughters and their daughters, who all end up in the States, one with an ordinary confortable life, and the daughter of Fidel who longs for the acceptance and position she feels she deserves. This is truly a powerful story, even moreso because itis true, of passion and what revolution can do in the light of modern Cuban history.
Rating:
Summary: Cuban Dreams--Myth or Reality
Review: Havana Dreams scans the 20th century in the unforgettable account of a Cuban family, descended from aristocrats, who live the high life before Fidel, and the heartbreak after. This is the story of Naty Revuelta, and four generations of Cuban women. In 1952, Naty met Fidel Castro, a young revolutionary, and although she was married, began a passionate affair with him that resulted in his unrecognized daughter and his rejection of her mother. Despite the large number of friends and family who fled Cuba, including Naty's husband, a doctor and their daughter, Nina, when Fidel took over, Naty stayed with her mother, Dona Natica and her daughter by Fidel, Alina, in hopes that she and Fidel would eventually be together. This is the story of her hopes and dreams, as well as the heartbreak of lost love and a disentegrating society. We trace the lives of Naty's daughters and their daughters, who all end up in the States, one with an ordinary confortable life, and the daughter of Fidel who longs for the acceptance and position she feels she deserves. This is truly a powerful story, even moreso because itis true, of passion and what revolution can do in the light of modern Cuban history.
Rating:
Summary: Havana Dreams Captures the Dream that was Cuba
Review: Wendy Gimbel weaves together Cuba's present and past so poetically that history becomes literature. In light of current trends toward increased contact with Cuba and the problematical policies on refugees, Havana Dreams is especially timely. I strongly recommend this book for all who want to undertand Cuba from the inside out.
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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