Vanishing Maps
A novel
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3.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
From the acclaimed author of Dreaming in Cuban, a follow-up novel that tracks four generations of the del Pino family against the tumultuous backdrops of Cuba, the U.S., Germany, and Russia in the new millennium
"A beautiful novel: hilarious one moment, haunting the next.” —Chris Bohjalian, author of The Flight Attendant and The Lioness
Celia del Pino, the matriarch of a far-flung Cuban family, has watched her descendants spread out across the globe, struggling to make sense of their transnational identities and strained relationships with one another. In Berlin, the charismatic yet troubled Ivanito performs on stage as his drag queen persona, while being haunted by the ghost of his mother. Pilar Puente, adrift in Los Angeles, is a struggling sculptor and the single mother of a young son. In Moscow, Ivanito’s cousin Irina has become the wealthy owner of a lingerie company, but she remains deeply lonely in the wake of her parents’ deaths and her estrangement from her Cuban heritage. Meanwhile, in Havana, Celia prepares to reunite with her lost lover, Gustavo, and wonders whether age and the decades spent apart have altered their bond.
Cut off from their Cuban roots, yet still feeling the island’s ineluctable pull, Ivanito and his extended family try to reimagine where—and with whom—they belong. Over the course of a momentous year, each will grapple with their histories as they are pulled to Berlin for a final, explosive reunion.
Set twenty years after the events in Dreaming in Cuban, Cristina García’s new novel is an epic tale of family, devotion, and the timeless search for home.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Garcia revisits characters from Dreaming in Cuban for this rich if uneven story of the del Pino family. It's 1999 and matriarch Celia del Pino, 90, remains one of the family's lone holdouts still residing in Havana. She's enamored with Gustavo, a married Spaniard with whom she shared a passionate night in 1934. Meanwhile, her grandson, Ivanito Villaverde, a translator and drag performer living in Berlin, is visited by apparitions of his dead mother, Felicia. One granddaughter, Irina del Pino, runs a brassiere factory in Moscow, while another, Pilar Puente, tries to balance single parenthood with her fledgling career as an artist in Los Angeles. Lourdes, Celia's surviving daughter and Pilar's mother, a baker in Miami, has become obsessed with the story of Eliseo González, a boy found clinging to life in the straits of Florida after his mother drowned as they fled Cuba. Celia pines for Gustavo and considers a trip to Granada to rekindle their passion. Worlds collide in Berlin: Pilar, with her six-year-old in tow, pays a surprise visit to Ivanito after a stormy encounter with Lourdes, while Irina travels there on business and meets a long-lost relative. Garcia piles on a bit too much backstory in the first half, though the narrative becomes much more intriguing once the family members reunite. Though a slow burn, this will appeal to readers of Cuban diasporic stories.
