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Telex From Cuba book reviews
Kirkus Review - Los Angeles resident Kushner's first novel follows the lives of American ex-pats and others in pre-revolutionary Cuba.
In 1950s Cuba, employees of the vast, powerful United Fruit Company enjoy luxuries galore in their exclusive island communities while poverty and unrest stirs around them. Growing up on United Fruit property, Everly Lederer and K.C. Stites alternately share the stories of their strange, privileged lives. Through the children's eyes, the social morays, recklessness and fears of the adults are revealed. While the children relay their upbringing in the Oriente Province, an exotic dancer, Rachel K, casts a spell on politicians and rebels alike in a nightclub in Havana. The mysterious Rachel K and one of her patrons, a French traitor, become deeply involved in the growing revolution, which leads them down an accelerating path toward a new and different future. Castro's coup serves as a riveting backdrop and famous figures, like Fidel and his brother Raél, populate the narrative. When the revolution reaches the gates of the American community, Everly and K.C. glimpse the world outside their secluded utopia, even as their socialite parents hold fast to their ignorance. The danger and violence of revolution engross Rachel K and the Frenchman, both of whom lack for a homeland, and they seem to thrive off the conflict. For the Americans, this harsh new backlash eventually shatters their previously tranquil lives, and the home they never truly possessed is seized in a flurry of patrimony. Soundly researched and gorgeously written, the creative story also serves as a history lesson.
An imaginative work that brings Cuban-American history to life.
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Booklist Reviews
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For 50 years before Castro's revolution, Americans controlled Cuba's main exports—sugar and nickel. United Fruit Company and Nicaro Mining sent its executives and their families to the island and built them their own city complete with native servants. In this lush and falsely idyllic environment, K.C. Stites and Everly Lederer grow up watching their parents disregard the poverty and brutality around them while getting drunk at the Americans-only club. When United Fruit's cane fields are burned, K.C.'s brother, Del, is the planner. Even Mr. Stites' mistress is working with a French agitator in the rebel underground, and he and his colleagues think they can't be vulnerable. It is not until the bombs begin to fall that the light dawns. Pulling from her mother's letters and journals of her time in Cuba in the 1950s, Kushner has written a gripping tale of what it was like to live through a momentous time. It is a powerful, haunting look at the human side of revolution.
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Publishers Weekly Reviews
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Kushner's colorful, character-driven debut succinctly captures the essence of life for a gilded circle of American expats in pre-Castro Cuba, chronicling a mlange of philandering spouses, privileged carousers and their rebellious children. K.C. Stites and Everly Lederer are raised among the American industrial strongholds of the United Fruit Company sugar plantation and the Nicaro nickel mines. As adolescents, they are confronted by the complexities of local warfare and backstabbing politics, while their parents remain ignorant of the impending revolution. Meanwhile, in Havana, burlesque dancer Rachel K and her former SS officer companion become entangled in Castro's revolution. Toward the end of 1957, K.C.'s brother, Del, joins the rebels, and within a month the United Fruit Company's cane fields are ablaze. Throughout the following year, the attacks on U.S.-operated businesses intensify; political and personal loyalties are shuffled and betrayed; and the violence between the rebels and Batista's forces escalate. The action, while slowed at times by Kushner's tendency to revisit plot points from multiple points of view, culminates in a riveting drama. Given the recent Cuba headlines, Kushner's tale, passionately told and intensively researched, couldn't have come at a more opportune time. (July)
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