Beautiful Maria of My Soul

Library Journal

Readers familiar with Hijuelos's Pulitzer Prize-winning blockbuster The Mambo Kings Sing Songs of Love (1989) will recognize this title: it's the name of the song that Nestor Castillo penned to his lost love, María. This latest novel explores that love in greater detail. Illiterate but beautiful María García escapes from her peasant surroundings in western Cuba in the hopes of making it big in Havana. There she meets small-time gangster Ignacio but becomes involved with Nestor; Ignacio gets rid of his rival by paying for the Castillo brothers' passage to New York. Later, after hearing the song written for her, María travels to New York to see Nestor; their steamy lovemaking on the last night of her trip is the culmination of the novel's latent eroticism. After Nestor is killed in a car crash, the novel turns briefly pedestrian, updating us about events in María's life. The last section, titled "Oh Yes That Book" (referring to Mambo Kings), fuses reality and fiction; Hijuelos himself makes an appearance, and the characters in this novel talk about those in the earlier one as if they were real. VERDICT In the end, this is every bit as good as Mambo Kings and may even pique interest in the earlier work for those who don't know it. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 3/15/10.]—Lawrence Olszewski, OCLC Lib., Dublin, OH

Kirkus Reviews

A sequel to The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (1989) that sings with the sweet sensuality of its predecessor. It has been two decades since Hijuelos made his popular breakthrough with The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a band of Cuban emigres whose appearance on I Love Lucy turned a lovesick bolero into a minor classic. That song was titled "Beautiful Maria of My Soul," and here the novelist returns to tell the story of Maria, to render her as flesh and blood as well as exotic (and erotic) inspiration. Yes, she remains "the most dazzling woman in Cuba," one whose beauty inspires rapture in every man who encounters her, including the author: "If that mirror were a man, it would have been salivating; if it were a carpet it would have taken flight; if it had been a pile of wood it would have burst into flame, so lovely was Maria." Yet such beauty is bittersweet, for this is a woman who knows that her fate depends upon it and that inevitably it will fade. There is music in her romance with Nestor Castillo, the shy but handsome trumpeter who will spend years composing the song that pays tribute to her. Each may be the other's true love, but life has other designs, as the novel shows how the beautiful Maria chooses her destiny, rebels against it and makes peace with it. The prose combines the simplicity of a folk tale with the lyricism of a romantic balladeer and the depth of a philosopher, as it encompasses what Maria considers "her holy trinity: God, love, and death." Amid the political undercurrent of revolution in Cuba and with a recognition of the racial complexities of America, Maria finds a new life in Miami, where she raises a daughter whose perspective within the novel ultimately prevails. The result is a sequel that can be relished independently of the first volume while harmonizing with it. More than worth the wait.

Publishers Weekly

In a sequel of sorts to The Mambo King Play Songs of Love, Hijuelos examines the life of the muse of that novel as she moves from childhood to the fast lane in mid-20th century Cuba. María enchants whether she's dancing in clubs, appearing in advertisements, or walking the sweltering streets of Havana. Her story is one of fierce love, luscious sex, and otherworldly beauty, but also of heartbreak and hardness, as she carries painful memories of the death of her sister and her dear mother. The two main men in her life are Ignacio, a nefarious, strong-willed businessman who provides poor María with extravagant clothes and an apartment, and Nestor, a poor musician whom she loves passionately. Less prominent but still present is María's daughter, Teresa, and her growing up in America. Hijuelos's Havana is as much a full-fleshed character as María as it endures the rise of Castro and the mass exodus of Cubans to Miami in the 1960s. An intelligent and playful ending caps off a vivid story that should delight readers of The Mambo Kings and enthrall those new to Hijuelos's imaginative and florid voice. (June)