A review by wathohuc
The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love by Oscar Hijuelos

3.0

Well, it was good enough. I have to admit to a little bit of disappointment. The nostalgia and the mood is thick in this novel, which is perhaps its strongest element in my opinion. But the narrative structure is a bit chaotic. It works in the sense that the reader doesn't get too completely lost in the different time frames in which the story is told, and one can figure it out; but it's not so intuitive as it could be and you have to work at figuring out when Cesar, the man in his dying days, is narrating, or when Cesar, the bandleader is narrating, or when Cesar, the has-been musician and aging building superintendent is narrating. It's too choppy, I think, and thus a bit distracting. Also, and this is probably just me, the description of sex and sexual desire was a bit too soft-core pornographic to me, and also a bit too overdone throughout the novel. Hijuelos could have conveyed Cesar's macho sexuality and clear sex addiction without referring to sexual encounters in graphic detail so many times. After a while, it seemed just too gratuitous. And the casual date rape that Cesar's admits to, and which is presented way too cavalierly with a careless dismissiveness, shocks the modern sensibilities. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a prude about such things; but I think it overpowered the story of immigrant displacement, longing, loneliness, and sentiments of profound loss that were at the heart of the story. I'm also a bit bummed that I saw the film before I read the novel. Even though it has been many years since I saw the film and I only vaguely remember it, the impressions that it left with me and which undoubtedly influenced my approach to the novel now, were very mistaken. The movie was much more about Nestor's longing for Maria, but, really, that factored so very little to the overall story, which was really about Cesar than about Nestor or Maria. I know that Hollywood has to sell a nice story in a short time, but the Hijuelos text doesn't really lend itself to a Hollywood style story, which means that the film had to take a lot of creative liberties. And so if you go into reading the novel thinking about the movie, you are setting yourself up for some disappointment. Needless to say, I am glad the book won the Pulitzer because it was a worthy effort and it did contribute to a greater popularity for Latinx authors, which I am glad happened.