Robert ArellanoCritiques

If I had to make up a genre for this book, it would be Atomic Noir. The beautifully brutal terrain of New Mexico is perhaps the most endearing character in Robert Arellano’s tale of the sort of paranoia that drug abuse and apocalyptic dreams engender. That said, I really dug it. I would search out other books by Arellano to see if they are all like this.

What's the opposite of Wonderland? Because, baby if anything is it, it would be Dig City.

Fast Times At Ridgemont High starring Eddie -- only not. (I don't honestly know a thing about Ridgemont High, so it's probably not an apt comparison, but rather a poorly made joke.) The novel follows Eddie's life, from his early days in the Beast as a boy who knew nothing of where he came from, to his time underground in The Hive as a man who regretted that knowledge immensely. Eddie is the puppet of that fickle, cruel, hand of fate, that seems to have a black-hearted sense of humor, karma, and irony.

The background of Eddie's story however, can be difficult to decipher if you aren't reading closely (or if you start the book and have to take a break and come back weeks later to finish it.) This book isn't one you can just skim through-- God is in the details and so is the finer points of the plot. Small things come back to haunt you and Eddie both as the book nears the tail end. One of my few grievances with the book come from the use of the fine details-- Eddie's story is so uncertain to even himself, that every time something changes its hard to keep up because it was the tiniest detail that suddenly became huge, and in a way that seemingly had no foreshadowing. As often as this happens it can be frustrating-- we follow Eddie in his feelings of whiplash with less-than-concrete information. Details come out of the blue seemingly, or from sources that are very unreliable (sometimes we're not even sure they aren't entirely inside Eddie's head) -- that latter a trademark of Arellano's it seems.

The background of the world was also a source of frustration to me at times, although whether this is through lack of clarity or my own misguided reading I'm not sure. I found it hard to be sure of the timing of the novel; it's after our own era for sure, but how much after? How topsy turvey is the world in this story? Its different for sure, but apart from the whole underground nation thing, the later scenes set in the above ground city seem like its a very similar world to the one we know, whereas in the beginning of the book it felt much more removed, with common information known to us now long having been as ancient as the Greeks are to us. Dear old Eddie didn't even know good old Honest Abe is the figurehead of something known as a penny. Also, its unclear which citys are which at times (again it could be my own confusion or a lack a clarity, not sure.) There are mentions of the state of Massachusetts, and possibly those cities of Boston, New York, or Washington D.C. (I'd have to go back and look to be sure,) but I never can quite tell "Where in the World Is Eddie?" I'd use his last name here to complete the Carmen Sandiego reference, but SHHHH spoilers.

As for the writing style itself, Fast Eddie is just that-- fast. The prose is quick and clever. If it were to be read aloud, the words would roll off the tongue smoothly, with an acerbic taste to them. Arellano is fond of alliteration in this novel; Eddie frequently employs it in his descriptions of his surroundings, thoughts, and feelings.

The only ever complaint that I had, and it may just be a personal gripe, is that Eddie's circumstances were highly fortunate. He was very often just lucky (or unlucky) to be in a certain place at a certain time, having been connected to the right people at the right time.

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For example, at the end of the book, when a former thorn in Eddie's side, Mano, returns out of the blue, instead of taking his revenge on our hero for the theft of his shoes, he works alongside him, helping him to set things right, because after all, he is Jocy's real son, and Hermanito to boot. Highly convenient. Another example, Eddie's knowledge of Pauly Corrente's password into the Custom House-- how the hell did he know that? I don't recall any instance where Pauly took Eddie by the shoulders and went "Son, here's the password to the Custom House, just in case you become the leader of a rebellion, and your people end up in trouble and need it to save their skins." Again, convenient.
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In the end however, despite all my nitpicking, Fast Eddie is a fun challenge, a joy to read, and a good summer brain exercise.

If you're reading Havana Lunar be prepared for an undertaking if you aren't versed in Cuban history.

If you're like me and you know absolutely nothing about Cuba (and your spanish is a bit rusty) you're going to have to muddle through this one and keep a spanish to english dictionary nearby. For the most part you can figure the meanings out by context, but in my opinion you lose something going that route. Knowing what is being said helps give the characters more depth.

The first part of this novel was the more difficult for me. Setting up the world and the characters in it can be an arduous task for a reader to get through, fighting down the desire to get the meat of the story. Its even more arduous when trying to do a history lesson at the same time.

Still its a good read, even if its not my favorite of Arellano's.

I say: me gusta!

Three different artists, one story, and one fun, quick read! Dead in Desemboque is quirky and fun, with an off-beat sense of humor.

I give Arellano credit for doing an incredible job of depicting Havana, Cuba and Little Havana in Miami, and offering believable voices, as well. But, at the same time, I'm afraid that that atmosphere was, for me, the best part of this book. The plot itself fell a bit flat for me, and the characters themselves came off as so nonchalant that there was almost a dampening effect on the plot, believable as they were. The pacing picked up a bit in the last part of the work, and I found myself more engaged, but the book as a whole just fell a bit flat for me. One of those, also, where I felt like more was happening To the characters, versus them being active, which probably heightened the passivity of the work as a whole.

I also have to say... the constant sprinkling in of Spanish got on my nerves. If it had come from particular characters/conversations and been translated, it wouldn't have bothered me, but it seemed to be sprinkled in almost randomly, which did more to draw attention that nearly all of the conversations taking place Would be taking place in Spanish--so why have some in Spanish and most in English if some are going to be in Spanish? And, while my Spanish is strong enough that I could understand a fair bit of those passages, I couldn't catch everything (maybe sometimes because I didn't care to put in the effort, I admit), and I found myself wondering about how readers without any Spanish would react.

So, yeah, this isn't something I could recommend, and I'm afraid I probably won't venture back to the author for more, much as I found the main character interesting at a characterization level.½

This is the story of a Cuban doctor sent to Miami to help thwart a bombing. I picked this up at the library because of the title. The cover, which is very off-putting and essentially had nothing to do with the book, almost made me put it back down. I kind of wish I had. The first half of the story, which takes place in Havana, I quite enjoyed. But once the doctor gets to Miami, the atmosphere is lost and so, unfortunately, is the plot. The ending was abrupt and felt very forced. If I were rating this book in parts, I'd give the first half 41/2 stars and the second half 2.

I was interested in reading this book because I had found the t.v. series "Four Seasons in Havana" on Netflix engrossing. It is obvious that Havana Libre is an intriguing novel. The author, Robert Arellano, immerses the reader in the culture and politics of Cuba in 1997 after the collapse of the Soviet Union. To accomplish this, he enriches the pages with Spanish words, phrases and idioms that, I am sure, create an authentic atmosphere. However, being totally illiterate in Spanish, I found this frustrating beyond belief. I was afraid of missing a significant connotation, insight or explication, I wanted to know the precise meaning and inflection of the Spanish. Yes, the meaning could sometimes be determined from the context, or the author would restate it in English immediately. But the majority of time I was totally adrift. I decided to read on, guessing at the meaning as much as I could. One example was "casas particulares." As the writer had just spoken of apartment houses, I translated this phrase as "individual houses." Later in the afternoon, I was reading an article about Cuba in the WSJ weekend issue of Jan 13/14. There, serendipitously, was "casas particulares" translated as B and B's. So I knew I could not trust my guesses. Now I was back to constantly looking up the translation on my IPhone. Having to do this destroyed the rhythm and flow of the novel. Who was the audience Arellano intended this book for? Billinguals? Or, was he perhaps saying if one couldn't understand the Spanish, one could never begin to understand Cuba?½

Let's start with the cover, shall we? I can't recall having read a book that had absolutely no tangible relationship with its cover. The virtually naked girl in the cover pic led me to believe I was about to enter into a steamy, passionate novel of the underbelly of Havana. Nothing like it.

Manolo, the hero of the story, is a delightful character with whom I establish an instant rapport. Author Robert Arellano has a perceptive eye for the Havana, the Cuba, the Miami I hoped I was going to read about. A man of principle and integrity, if a little naive - as we discover later in the story - Manolo is someone with whom you can empathize throughout the novel. In his initial encounter with Colonel Perez, Arellano skilfully sets the scene, and even better, picks up the thread from this book's predecessor, Havana Lunar, without giving anything away. Very cleverly done.

As the chapters race by - and they will - Manolo finds himself in the toughest of predicaments. The author twists and turns the plot into so many different contortions you'll find the story breathless and the book, difficult to put down.

I loved some of Arellano's descriptions of contemporary Cuba. The resentment of tourists - "keeping the dying beast on life support"; the "collective hallucination" of leaving the island...all very evocative and a portrait of the crumbing, post-Soviet infrastructure.

I found the sequence of the chapters somewhat difficult to follow at first. But the story flies by with such intensity that you can set that little inconvenience aside and ingest the entire book in one sitting.

Disclaimer: I received an Early Review copy of this book in return for an impartial and honest review.

Havana Libre opens with a tourist going through customs in Havana, a tourist soon revealed to be a terrorist smuggling bomb-making materials into the country, before taking up the story of the main character, Dr. Mano Rodriguez. Mano is a dedicated doctor, though frustrated by the privations and inefficiencies of Cuba’s regime. Much of the focus is on how much harder life has become for Cubans after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of Soviet support. The decades-long blockade impinging more than it did when the Communist bloc ignored it.

Mano has been invited to attend a medical conference in Tampa, though he knows he will never get approval. After all, his mother is dead and his father is an exile, a gusano (worm), who defected before he was born. When state security discovers there is a terrorist planning an attack on Havana, Mano is a perfect person to investigate…he has a reason for going to Florida and the person who they believe paid the bomber is a friend of his father. After seeing the aftermath of one hotel bombing, Mano agrees to go.

The mystery is about half n Havana and half in Miami. In Havana, we learn about his life, his family, and his interest is helping a young patient. We learn about his job and a lot about life in Cuba. The story is based on the real September 4, 1997, terrorist attacks in Havana by Cuban exiles and the Cuban Five who came to the US as defectors to find the terrorist networks.

There is much to admire in Robert Arellano’s Havana Libre. The mystery is sufficiently complex and when things seem too easy, there is a reason for that. The suspense and jeopardy are real, not contrived. The sense of place is excellent and Arellano uses all five senses to draw us into the story. Most of the characters are complex and interesting.

There is one major flaw, though it’s not in the story, setting, or characters. It is in the writing. Arellano incorporates a lot of Spanish. This should not be a problem, lots of writers interject foreign language into their books featuring foreign characters. However, there’s a kind of rhyme and reason to those additions. Generally speaking, people who are speaking in English reach to their first language when they swear, when they are agitated, and when the English language does not really capture the fuller meaning of the first language idiom.

Arellano inserts Spanish in all those cases, but also in weird and obtrusive ways such as using piernas. It’s not an idiomatic expression with more meaning than legs, it’s not a moment of agitation or an epithet. It’s just a Spanish word used instead of an English one. It’s not a word a second language speaker would struggle for either, it’s first-year vocabulary. I am fluent in Spanish, so I did not struggle with the frequent Spanish words, but even I found the frequent resorting to Spanish obtrusive and interruptive. When Arellano uses ganas instead of wanting, it makes sense. Ganas has so much more meaning and context, lust, ambition, desire…so that is smart. Piernas is just wrong. These are just two examples, but the story is riddled with Spanish used without the usual reasons of agitation, epithet, or idiomatic power.

I also struggle with how writers will toss in maricón, the homophobic epithet. It made sense in the context of this book, but was it necessary? In this book as in most of them where the writer uses this word, it seems like a permission slip to use the English epithet that would be impermissible without using the Spanish to leverage its use.

What I liked best was the obvious love Mano has for Cuba and its people. So often, books about Cuba are one-dimensional, but this one is far better than that. Yes, life is a struggle and the government is stultifying and oppressive, but it’s not paranoid. Other people really are out to get them.

Havana Libre was released today. I received an advance reading copy from the publisher through a LibraryThing drawing. It is a sequel to Havana Lunar both featuring Dr. Mano Rodriguez.

Havana Libre at Akashic Books
Robert Arellano on Facebook

https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2017/12/05/9781617755835/

This seems to be my year for books about how awful life in Cuba is. I have here Havana Libre, Robert Arelland’s self-described noir novel set in Havana and Miami. A few months ago, my book club inexplicably discussed The Boy Who Said No, a “true-life” novel by Patti Sheehy based on the story of a young Cuban soldier who managed to emigrate. While Havana Libre is better written than that right-wing screed, both books have a flavor that the authors were working with checklists of awful conditions under Castro that had to be worked in somehow. For a counterexample of how Communist Cuba can be used wonderfully as an exotic setting, I recommend William Kennedy’s Changó’s Beads and Two-Tone Shoes.

Back to the subject at hand. Author Arelland seems to be very familiar with life in Cuba and the local color rings true. I just wish he had spent more time on plot and less on getting preachy about how the reader ought to feel about life under a despotic state. Arelland develops two main characters: Manalo, an idealistic young doctor, and Mercedes, a country girl thrown onto her own resources in Havana. They become involved in the main story line about a planned terrorist bombing and steps being taken to thwart it. But the book falls flat at the end when the resolution takes place off-stage and really doesn’t involve any of the characters we know.

What's most engaging about this book is its authenticity in contrasting life in Cuba and the United States just before the turn of the millennium. Arellano tells it primarily from the perspective of a doctor loyal to Castro's government, even while he struggles with the effects on himself and his fellow citizens. The book is political and cultural commentary, and yet it's a worthy spy thriller. My main critique is that it seemed to end quickly and without full resolution. I found myself thinking about the open questions and ultimately liked how they were left to the reader. I like this genre, and I like books that present something new to experience. This book did both for me.

Really, I liked it, though the ending seemed rushed and a little too pat. It took me a few pages to get into it, but then the pages seemed to fly by. In a good way as the adventure, mystery developed. What would happen, will our hero see the problem through or will this ending be another twist in a twist filled story. I don't want to be a spoiler, so leave it there. One thing that interfered with the flow of the narrative was author's interjections of conversations in Spanish(some with translation, some without) was for me very distracting. Mostly you don't lose the essence of the story, but it is distracting. Still a good story and I felt my time reading it was time well spent.

Robert Arellano's Havana Libre captured the essence of the noir genre. The interaction of the characters in the exotic locations of Havana and Miami alongside the dichotomy of life between the citizens of each city were an intriguing backdrop to the story of the Doctor Rodriguez. The plot of terrorist activity in Castro's Cuba was thoroughly enjoyable. The only complaint that I had with the writing was the frequent use of Spanish words or phrases. I suppose it was meant to lend authenticity to the story but often I found it distracting and cumbersome. Despite this, I was entertained and would recommend this work.

Havana Libre is a rich portrayal of life in Cuba - particularly Havana - in the late '90's. One gets the sense of what it took to survive in that challenging time and the frustration of the common people seeing the wealthy tourists and corrupt administrators. This book's strength is in developing the scene and characters and less in the story itself. Much is made of the difference between life in Havana and Miami as the story line progresses, so much so that it actually hinders the story itself.
Manolo is a physician who is recruited to help the Cuban security service stop bombings in popular tourist locations. He is sent to Miami to try and find information about the exile who is funding and directing these bombings and stop them. His estranged father is connected with these people but Manolo doesn't know exactly how.
Spoiler alert.
The plot has a weakness in that Manolo ends up having almost no effect on the outcome and there is no resolution to what happens to the ringleader of the bombings.
I also found the amount of dialogue in Spanish to be a bit frustrating - although the meaning isn't lost there seemed little point to it.½

Havana Libre is the second of two “Cuban noir” novels written by Robert Arellano. This story primarily takes place in 1997 in Havana and Miami. This is at the height of efforts by Cuban exiles to take back their island and kill not only tourism but the Revolution through a series of hotel bombings. What I enjoyed about this story was the vibrant and colorful description of Havana during this Periodo Especial as Cuba adjusted to the fall of the Soviet Union. His description of Miami exiles is equally as good. Arellano brings back Dr. Rodriguez (apparently the main character in Havana Lunar) who is sent to the States to uncover the group behind the bombings as well as meet his father who he has never seen because of his escape from Cuba before his birth. The big negative for me as a non-Spanish speaking person is the author’s continued introduction of conversations in Spanish. While it is possible to mostly interpret the meaning aI found it off putting and at times difficult to follow. Overall it makes for interesting reading with a couple of unexpected turns (although the big escape and the eventual capture of the Tourist are hard to accept).

HAVANA LIBRE by Robert Arellano is “a detailed and precise portrait of one of the most surreal places on earth….Compelling and restrained, this is Arellano’s best.” (Achy Obejas)
“In this explosive follow-up to HAVANA LUNAR, Dr. Mano Rodriguez takes an undercover assignment to the most dangerous city in Latin America: Miami. During the summer of 1997, a series of bombings terrorize Havana hotels. The targets are tourists, and the terrorists are exiles seeking to cripple Cuban tourism and kill the Revolution. After Mano finds himself helpless to save one of the victims, his nemesis Colonel Emilio Perez of the National Revolutionary Police recruits him into Havana’s top-secret Wasp Network of spies for a job that only he can perform - but for reasons he never would have believed or expected.” (Press Kit)
The characters are very compelling: Colonel Emilio Perez of the National Revolutionary Police; our narrator and main character - Dr. Man(olo) Rodriguez; Mercedes Delgado - in Havana to escape her life and situation in Pinar; Dr. Juan Rodriguez - Manolo’s father in Miami.
The landmark hotel, Havana Libre, is a character in its own right.
The characters are very passionate, yet sad and oppressed with many secrets and resentments.
The ‘sense of place’ is outstanding - Cuba in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union. The tension in the streets caused by the bombings is very palpable.
It did take me a long time to finish the book. It was full of Spanish words, sentences and references. My Spanish/English dictionary and atlas - both were heavily referenced, as was Wikipedia.
The tone and atmosphere of the book was interesting, sad and somewhat sinister.
My favorite passages are from the ‘chapter’ Sabado, 6 Septiembre Manolo.
Manolo makes his way to his boyhood home near Vinales. He prefers “to follow the road from town to the dark side of the valley on foot, three kilometers up a shadeless, steady slope. The poinsettias grow enormous on either side of the trail.” (p. 122)
Manolo remembers his abuelo’s voice when he was a boy. “La palma real is the perfect tree.”
The surroundings are so detailed and descriptive and his family is as dysfunctional as so many other families in Cuba and around the world - jealousies, resentments, poverty, craziness, and brutality.
HAVANA LIBRE is a fascinating, compelling, suspenseful, interesting read.

I don't know if 'pre-Apocalyptic' is a genre yet, but that's where this book seems to sit. I thought it was brilliant: a disturbing and dark tale of a man's disintegration in the hot summer glare of Los Alamos.

Interesting little book which would seem right at home in the bizarre book section at your local head shop. The story and premise start out intriguing but they both fail to fully deliver.

I think there is a great story here but it just didn't quite do it for me. The pacing was engaging and I certainly was able to visalize the character and scenes. I think the author almost delivered on this one and could have knocked this one out of the park with a few tweaks to the storyline.

Would I recommened this one? Probably not. I will however be looking forward to the next book by this author because I think he has tremendous imagination and potential.½

It was an interesting book, but it left me unsatisfied. The pace is good, the storyline has potential, but it is missing a lot of context or informations. Can't really put my finger on it, but I did feel lost at some point, the story taking me in different direction without actually telling me why. It left a lot of questions and I felt like I was missing the point.

A great story idea..... and I found it easy to read, however, it felt incomplete. I do not pretend to be a book critic, and I am not going to waste your time or mine talking about the story in depth or character development, etc. Quite simply, I was expecting something more from this book and the teasers on the cover, but alas it failed. I did finish it as it was fairly short.

This book was read as part of the LibraryThing Early Reviewers group.

Curse the Names is an odd little book. The situation is fairly straight-forward: James Oberhelm is a journalist employed by the Los Alamos National Laboratory whose 10 year marriage has turned stale. He’s bored with his job, bored with his wife, and bored with his life. In a somewhat terrified hope of an extra-marital hookup, he decides to meet a stranger at an old abandoned house. That’s when things go all weird… both with the story and the effect it had on me.

Part paranormal thriller, part psychological thriller, and part conspiracy theory thriller, Arellano does a good job at weaving a very tight storyline into only 188 pages. I especially like (and admire) his ability to wring the most out of very few words. I do think there were a few scenes that would have benefited from expansion (primarily with description) given their ultimate importance in the book, but that would have had ill-effects on the quick pacing necessary for this kind of novel.

What kept me going through most of it was that it was told in the past-tense. I assumed I was going to get some kind of resolution to… something. But with 30 pages remaining, Arellano shifts to first person present, and all hope of any kind of resolution quickly fades away as the narrative shifts to one buried in the psychosis of the protagonist. While I don’t need everything handed to me wrapped in a neat little bow, I do need something that lets me know the last 158 pages is actually going to mean something. Instead, I was left wondering not just about the story lines and potential causes of all this disaster that has fallen upon poor, hapless, drunken James, but, because the story itself has shifted into the present tense, I found myself questioning even the few things I “knew” to be true from earlier in the book. The shift in tense was quite subtle and extremely well done (especially the specific point at which it occurs), but ultimately I think it lessened the overall impact by casting everything that happened into doubt and eliminating any kind of satisfactory resolution.

Most important, though, and from which everything else stems, I found James’ drug and booze habits forced and cliche. Rich, bored, and unhappy, a once-brilliant writer turns addict and his life falls apart in a psychotropic haze. His apathy makes him an unlikeable narrator, and his drug-addled decisions and observations make him unreliable narrator. I found his characterization, and everyone else’s, to be rather shallow and steadfast with little growth or development of any kind. While it’s a perfectly valid choice to remain steadfast and keep making the same mistakes time and again, it becomes stale and predictable, which is my overall impression of not just James, but the novel as a whole.

At the end of the day, Curse the Names felt incomplete to me… incomplete storylines, incomplete character development, incomplete settings.

As a humorous side-note (to me, anyway), I’ve never seen anyone “scavenge” as much change from “the cracks” of car seats as James Oberhelm. I bet I couldn’t come up with even a 10th of what he did, and I’ve owned my junker for nearly a decade.

I tried to finish this book since it was an Early Reviewer book, but it wasn't easy. The main character is completely unlikeable and the plot is not engaging. I definitely wouldn't recommend it.½

"Curse the Names" is both an interesting read: at points an ambitious novel with a variety of complex themes and ideas, yet also an easygoing and lackadaisical narrative that leisurely meanders through a menagerie of loosely connected ideas and plot points. With an unsympathetic narrator trying to find his way amongst a broken marriage, drug addiction and nightmarish visions of nuclear disaster, the story is an existential noir/thriller quality reminiscent of Don Delilo. Though the story gets a little lost along the way creating a distinct environment in this southwestern New Mexican setting, the book climaxes nicely when it unites its disparate ideas.

I really didn't like this book which is a shame because I have really enjoyed some of his past books. I found the story to be a slog and I found the payoff at the end to be disappointing.

A lot of reviews have given this book 3 stars because, if I understand correctly, it features a man having a meltdown (in more ways than one). Or maybe it's rated a 3 because they were expecting a police procedural when they got instead a dark psychological thriller with a hint of the supernatural (along the lines of what Stephen King might write as a "thriller").

Yes, there is drug use (pot, btw... when I saw all these references to drugs, I was thinking they meant "real drugs" not just marijuana). And the main character is an ass for sure... but... really, is he that much different than a lot of middle aged men in a loveless relationship and a meaningless job? No, I don't think so.

I found it to be a very engaging story, albeit dark and a bit depressing... and I give it a nice 4 stars.