A review by robin_is_me
Next Year in Havana by Chanel Cleeton

informative medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? Yes

5.0

I loved this book so much. So much! More than I anticipated. The characters are so well written, and the descriptions of Cuba are evocative. The author really makes Cuba come alive, like a separate character of the book. The narrative moves back and forth between Elisa’s story in in 1958, in the midst of the revolution just before Fidel Castro takes over the presidency, and her granddaughter Marisol’s story in 2017, as she travels from her home in Florida to Cuba to find a place to spread her grandmother’s ashes. The only negative thing I can think of is that Elisa and Marisol aren’t particularly indistinguishable from each other; the author’s voice doesn’t really change and at times I would momentarily have to remind myself whose story/which time period I was in. But the writing is so wonderful that it’s a fairly minor complaint. 

I know who Castro was, of course, but I didn’t really know much about him. In 1959, Elisa falls for a revolutionary, Pablo, who is a friend of Castro, and staunchly supports him in his bid to overthrow the president, Fulgencio Batista. I was a little confused because everything I did know about Castro was that he was bad, so I didn’t quite understand why Pablo was so supportive of him in the beginning. And I knew absolutely nothing about Batista. I found it all so fascinating that on my next trip to Barnes & Noble I searched for books on the revolution. There were only three books under Cuba, none focused on Batista and/or Castro. One about Che Guevera, and I’ve already forgotten what the second book was about. I chose Cuba: An American History, by Ada Ferrer, which looked to be the closest to what I wanted. 

But I digress. There are books that are good, that are novels. And then there are books that wonderful, that are literature. NEXT YEAR IN HAVANA is literature, and I’m very eager to find the rest of the author’s books, especially WHEN WE LEFT CUBA, about Elisa’s sister.