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The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love Oscar Hijuelos 9780140143911 Books

Download As PDF : The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love Oscar Hijuelos 9780140143911 Books

The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love Oscar Hijuelos 9780140143911 Books

I enjoyed parts of this book, as it was well written, but the story never really grabbed me. In fact, there didn't seem to be much of a story - it just meandered. It almost seemed like a short story/novella that was rewritten to be a full length book. It took me forever to finish because I would put it down and then have a hard time getting back to it (and I'm an avid reader). I'm not going to recap the story - I'm sure that's been done elsewhere but what I will say is that the story started out well and was pretty compelling but lost steam and never really went anywhere. Also I felt several of the characters were not well developed. I wanted to know more about Delores and Ernesto, as they seemed like they could have been interesting people.


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The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love Oscar Hijuelos 9780140143911 Books Reviews

NOTE TO KINDLE PUBLISHER-- The last pages of the book do not match the paperback version. The actual END of the book is there in the kindle version, BUT it goes ON to some additional pages that are earlier paragraphs from the book and if you don't know that you've read the end it seems to go on quite oddly. If I had not had the actual physical copy to compare them, I would be confused about where the book really ends. This does a huge disservice to this book. The kindle version (at least the one I purchased July of 2014) also eliminates the "afterward" and the author bio.
I loved this novel and thought it was beautifully written, however, I agree with some of the posters who have complained that it meandered too much. It DID meander, but those "meanderings" were fortunately, spectacularly beautiful. While reading, I kept thinking that with a better editor, it would be a more cohesive story. But as I thought about it, it seems that the meandering followed a jazz structure wherein there are improvisational riffs that do what they do and though connected to the song are also little works of art unto themselves. If you're reading for a structure that you've seen before in books, which is often a three-act structure, this novel may be frustrating. But if you read it just to experience and explore it, the way the character Caesar explores and delights in all the parts of a woman's body, you will find the way to experience this book. There IS a destination to the story, but this isn't a story about getting to a destination, it's about living in the moments and REALLY experiencing the fullness of each of them. The novel examines what ultimately feels like a real life, fully lived, with wonderful moments of joy and success and love AND deep disappointment and despair. It expresses the longing for achieving something that had been unknown until it was too late for the body to accomplish what the soul was trying to get at. For those who are astounded at why it won a pulitzer they missed an element of the book that some people will intuit and others won't. I understand this, because there were times when I was reading, that I, too, was missing what was being communicated. But it IS there. This is a book that one must read on more than a surface level. The sex scenes are NOT merely pornography. I am smiling as I write this, because I really do understand how they could be perceived that way. But beyond that they're about connection, participation in life, expressing one's passion, expressing one's soul and doing it well, wanting to be accepted and admired. I still think some tighter editing could have made this novel even better, but at the same time, I also feel the style of approach was deliberate and I appreciate the opportunity to see the work as the artist created it. While I don't think it's a perfectly neat or structured book, I don't think life is terribly neat either and this novel seems to be trying to give us an experience of a person's life as he sees it. For me, the result is an expanded view of life and its possibilities and that's what I hope for when I read.
Awesome story and very accurate.
can't remember which person the story was written. I couldn't put it down once I started it. If you loved the movie, you will love the book which is filled with much more back story and goes far beyond where the movie ended. Excellent and so deserving of the Pulitzer.
Oscar Hijuelos won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. It is a is a wonderful period piece of the early 1950's, where night clubs had dance contests, men wore zoot suits, and women hoped that all the lace and garter belts and perfume would help them find the man to take care of them. "Everything was different back when; 125th Street was jumping with clubs, there was less violence, there were fewer beggars; more mutual respect between people,”
In 1949 Cesar and his younger brother leave Cuba and hit New York City to play their music and try to make it big like Tino Fuentes and their role model Desi Arnez. When in fact Desi happens to hear them play one night , he invites them to his house and to appear on his show. This helps propel the Mambo Kings to some degree of fame and the rerun of the appearance, when Cesar is 62, is the start of the narrative.
"Between the delicate-looking index and middle fingers of his right hand, a Chesterfield cigarette burning down to the filter, that hand still holding a half glass of rye whiskey, which he used to drink like crazy because in recent years he had been suffering from bad dreams, saw apparitions, felt cursed, and, despite all the women he took to bed, found his life of bachelorhood solitary and wearisome."
Hijuelos' portraits of the brothers are wonderfully drawn. Cesar Castillo, the guitar strumming womanizer whose voice and gregarious personality help the band become a big hit, and Nester, the trumpet playing, tortured artist who writes 22 versions of the song Maria of my Soul. He is haunted by a lost love, even though he meets and marries Delores. "Beautiful María of My Soul.” A song about love so far away it hurts; a song about lost pleasures, a song about youth, a song about love so elusive a man can never know where he stands; a song about wanting a woman so much death does not frighten you, a song about wanting that woman even when she has abandoned you."
Their story is told in reflection as the older, overweight Cesar sits in his hotel room reminiscing about the good old days and the many women he has loved. I recommend going to YouTube and listening to the haunting Beautiful Maria of my Soul, letting that melody be the background as you embrace the adventures of these two very different brothers. Though I would caution that the lovemaking tales of Cesar are not for the easily offended, the writing does remind me of that of Junot Diaz who I am sure would acknowledge Hijuelos as a muse. After all Diaz did name his favorite character Oscar.
Great novel that reads like an intimate documentary of life as a Cuban immigrant musician in NYC in the 40s and 50s. It was fun to read after watching the films "Calle 54" and "Chico y Rita." An omniscient narrator chronicles the hopes, dreams, aspirations, and ambitions of ordinary men with tremendous musical talent and tremendous capacity for physical hardship, emotional pain, and living life to the fullest.
I enjoyed parts of this book, as it was well written, but the story never really grabbed me. In fact, there didn't seem to be much of a story - it just meandered. It almost seemed like a short story/novella that was rewritten to be a full length book. It took me forever to finish because I would put it down and then have a hard time getting back to it (and I'm an avid reader). I'm not going to recap the story - I'm sure that's been done elsewhere but what I will say is that the story started out well and was pretty compelling but lost steam and never really went anywhere. Also I felt several of the characters were not well developed. I wanted to know more about Delores and Ernesto, as they seemed like they could have been interesting people.