Remaking a Lost Harmony

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

While many readers in the U.S. are now familiar with writers from South and Central America, fewer know those from Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. The 25 stories collected here attest to a tradition worthy of wider notice. Written since the Cuban Revolution of 1959, these stories struggle with themes and situations not so different from those of their authors' counterparts on the mainland. The urgent social realism of such established island authors as Luis Rafael Snchez and Jos Alcntara Almnzar has given way in recent years to a kind of Raymond Carver domestic realism, but whatever the style, they both offer worthwhile insights into a distinct culture. Hilma Contreras's ``The Fire'' and Vernica Lpez Knina's ``Silvia'' focus on gripping female protagonists that are victims, but not so much of their nation's political upheavals as of the lives they've made for themselves in the shadows of men. In sharp contrast, Pedro Piex's lyrical ``Requiem for a Wreathless Corpse'' offers a fresh treatment of the political themes common to earlier island writers. Having spent much of their lives under repressive rule, this postrevolutionary generation of writers have invented new ways of escaping the pervasive societal lassitude. (June)