End Of The Drought

It's official - Thanks to Cristina Garcia's luminous 1992 debut "Dreaming In Cuban", the drought is over. Although never in doubt a great novel was just around the bend, by the time I closed Garcia's rich multi generational tale, weeks had passed since I finished the last novel worth raving and blogging about - Jonathan Franzen's "Purity". I think that gap filled with just-OK books is a bell curve record, although not one I wanted to reach.

Hard to single out what I liked best about Garcia's book - sharp and assured prose, the believable depiction of political fissures and how they complicate love, a satisfying lack of linearity that doesn't interfere with the strong narrative line. Though in this talented author's spell from the start, as she closed her third act I was mesmerized and completely unsure where she was going to leave me. I'd sincerely like to know if Garcia knew from the outset what Celia - the matriarch of the novel - was going to do as the book concluded. If you've read "Dreaming In Cuban", please tell me what you anticipated approaching the penultimate page.

"What they feared even more, Celia realized later, was that passion might spare them entirely, that they'd die conventionally, smug and purposeless, having never savored its blackness."