“Do we still know what it’s like to dream about the other side of the mountain? At what point does one cross the crest of forgetting? And this is when I think of Matias, who breached the space of the known for nothing more than a glimpse of the white-blind city on the other side.”

Book Review:

Review by Roger Brunyate  AUG 18, 2011)

I have seldom read such an extraordinary collection of stories, fascinating in their sheer inventiveness, subtly interlinked so that their images reflect and coruscate.* It is not entirely right to speak of stories either. Roughly half the two dozen pieces in this collection might be called stories in the normal sense, though some are no more than brief surreal hallucinations. The rest include several poems, two sets of dictionary entries, a letter and the reply to it, a news report, and a brief history of poetry in Cuba. All the pieces are ostensibly by different authors, collected by an expatriate Irishman who introduces himself in the preface and concludes with brief biographies of all the writers involved. All of course are fictional, even the author herself: “Ana Menéndez is the pseudonym of an imaginary writer and translator, invented, if not to lend coherence to this collection, at least to offer it the pretense of contemporary relevance.”

All this cleverness would mean little were Menéndez not able to write and have something vital to write about — but she does and she can. Listen to the ending of “Journey Back to the Seed,” as a senile Cuban woman in exile in Miami thinks slowly back to her birth on that scented island:

“And then her soul passing through a pinhole in the firmament, her thin thread-self forgetting that she had once remembered the pleasure of the body, the sound of the wind…. Nameless now she goes, tearing stars into time’s shroud, cleansed and purified for the journey’s return.”

Or, at the other end of the scale, a six-year-old boy woken by his mother to set out on a long trip:

“Children are the slaves of other voices. They have not yet mastered the first person singular and are always at the blunt end of someone else’s dream.”

This story, “Cojimar,” and the two that follow her are obviously based on the 1999 story of Elián González, the sole survivor of an escape by sea from Cuba, who was eventually repatriated by the US authorities. But Menéndez shies from telling the story straight: the first tale is suspended somewhere between the uncomprehending wonder of the child and the almost mystical fears of an old fisherman. The second is a comedy set in an officeful of Miami expatriates engaged in milking the US Government. The third is a Cuban press-release.

This technique of approaching a subject from different angles and in wildly differing styles is central to the author’s method. Few of the other pieces can be tied down so clearly to an historical event. She has mostly chosen to occupy the mind of the exile as a psychic space, dreaming alternately of escape and return. Images of transport abound: flight, wings, parachutes, balloons; boats, winds, and the call of the sea; grand railroad terminals, and trains speeding through darkness that never reach their destination.

The first story, “You Are the Heirs of All My Terrors,” a surreal nightmare of an old man hunted by killers in a station whose roof opens to the firmament, ends with a line that is typical of the whole: “With a great concussion of air, the train swept into the station, bearing with it the smell of the sea.” Except that there is no “typical;” Menéndez’ style keeps changing, and some of her most effective stories are barely connected to the Cuban theme at all. In “Three Betrayals,” an ordinary divorce case becomes an allegory of loss. In “The Express,” a professor commuting home from another city starts to reevaluate her life when the train hits a suicide:

“And now? Now she was whole, complete, content. She breathed and loved. She’d banished danger; but never again would she be invited to dance on its electric rim.”

Ana Menéndez is a wizard with English and a born writer. But an exile tells a life-story that has no proper ending, in a language that does not belong. There is an amusing trio of fables in the book constructed like a computer program that keeps looping back to the beginning and never ends. There is a small anthology of poems put into English by Google Translate; the original Spanish version of the first of them appears as a footnote to another story, and the differences are laughable, but soon the fractured English of the Google version develops a magic of its own. There is even a story about two Americans in the Caribbean written entirely in Spanish, with just the odd phrase of English, a pointed reversal of the way that novelists typically give local color to stories in foreign settings. I mention these things to illustrate Menéndez’ invention and variety, but I would not leave the impression that this book is merely clever and nothing more. Indeed, as I thumb through it now, I keep coming on passages that touch me again with their beauty, wonder, or sorrow. Reading this is an experience like no other.

*But then I have not read any Borges — an omission I shall soon correct — and I very much suspect his genius is in the air Menéndez breathes.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 4 readers
PUBLISHER:	Grove Press, Black Cat; Original edition (August 2, 2011)
REVIEWER:	Roger Brunyate
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Ana Menendez
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: The Last War

Bibliography:

• In Cuba I Was A German Shepherd (2001)
• Loving Che (2003)
• The Last War (May 2009)
• Adios, Happy Homeland (August 2011)

“That’s how it is, isn’t it? If you’re going to die, you might as well live. Death on a full belly is better than a life of hunger.”

Book Review:

Reviewed by Beth Chariton (AUG 10, 2009)

If you become numb to the conflict of constant war, does it prevent you from dealing with your own personal battles? In The Last War, by Ana Menéndez, Flash and Brando get paid to travel and document war – he the “Wonderboy” journalist, she the photographer/wife that follows in his shadow.

Brando travels to Baghdad, while Flash stays behind in Istanbul, waiting for photography equipment, travel papers, or any other excuse she can find to avoid joining him. He calls her from Baghdad, sometimes twice a day, from the rooftop of the mansion he’s staying in, while she answers from their four-bedroom apartment with the fabulous view. Their type of reporting allows them to live several classes higher than their means, and all on Brando’s company’s bill.

Any intimacy between them has slowly diminished from exposure to war, human hatred and revenge. They get by on small amounts of surface dialogue, the war too devastating to discuss out loud or often, and daily topics of conversation too trivial compared to the surrounding destruction.

At first, Flash enjoys her time alone, glad for the break from their strained marriage. While Brando waits patiently for her arrival in Baghdad, she continues to accept small freelance jobs and visits her list of desired tourist destinations in Istanbul.

After two weeks, Flash receives a letter stating the Brando is having an affair in Baghdad, and Flash’s inner battle begins – the constant, internal dialogue, the nagging pre-occupation with not knowing the truth. She starts to wonder if she ever loved him, and if he truly missed her or just the fact that she follows behind him. Consumed by doubt and resentment, she searches his office, looking for clues. She struggles with insecurity, realizing how much time she’s spent in their marriage waiting around for him to return from assignments. Rather than confront him by phone, she tells herself she’s waiting to see him in person, to see his face when she asks. He senses through their phone conversations that something isn’t quite right, and now, he’ll be the one waiting for her.

In the days following the arrival of the letter, she wanders aimlessly through the city, obsessing about the letter and the supposed sender, Mira. Feelings of insecurity, paranoia and inferiority overwhelm her, depleting her concentration and preventing her from working.

Then Flash realizes she’s being followed by a mysterious woman in a black abaya, and that she’s seen her a number of times in her daily travels. The woman finally reveals herself outside Flash’s apartment, and she instantly remembers Alexandra from their previous travels in Afghanistan. She continues to show up unexpectedly and uninvited, and her beauty and charisma make Flash feel awkward and self-conscious. Flash is suspicious of her constant presence, and wonders if Alexandra has anything to do with the letter. But Alexandra denies having anything to do with it, and her reaction is cool, calm, and unsympathetic.

Insomnia and migraines take over, and Flash paces through the nights while her upstairs neighbors argue violently, screaming and dragging furniture across their floor. Unable to decide whether she should return to the States, or join her husband in Iraq, exhaustion takes her on a downward emotional spiral of packing and unpacking the new suitcase she purchases in the marketplace. It’s no longer clear to her where her true home is.

Alexandra’s presence stirs up many restless memories for Flash. Night and day she’s consumed with flashbacks to her time in Afghanistan with Brando, Alexandra, and Alexandra’s boyfriend, Amir. Then Alexandra’s lonely, insecure side is exposed at a party they attend together, and Flash relaxes around her, feeling a mutual empathy for their situations. But it’s the last she’ll see of Alexandra in Istanbul. A week later, she sends Flash an e-mail, saying she’s leaving on a flight for Amman.

An unexpected tragedy forces Flash to realize that her self-righteous martyrdom has conveniently distracted her from her own shortcomings, leaving her a self-made victim. Four years later, Flash runs into Alexandra, who confesses the real reason she pursued Flash in Istanbul. Relishing the moment, she finally exposes the truth to Flash about the hurtful betrayal they had ignored all along. Now both women would have to deal with their own sordid pasts in order to get on with their lives.

Maybe it’s Flash who figuratively threw the first bomb, or shot the first bullet on the battlefield of her marriage. But who would be the first to wave the white flag? Universal or personal, there are no winners when any war ends, and the true enemy is sadly revealed after the damage has been done.

This novel is well written, and just the right length. Ana Menéndez does a wonderful job of bringing the character’s humanity to the page. Written in first person, the author places us right in Flash’s psyche, along with her anxieties, insecurities and their extreme accompanying emotions. The intricately layered themes of war and conflict on all levels are something that every reader will relate to while reading this story.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 28 readers
PUBLISHER:	Harper; 1 edition (May 26, 2009)
REVIEWER:	Beth Chariton
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Wikipedia page on Ana Menendez
EXTRAS:	An earlier interview with Ana Menedez (2001)
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	More war torn stories:The Distance Between Us by Masha Hamilton Forgive Me by Amanda Eyre Ward Certainty by Madeline Thien More by Ana Menendez: Adios, Happy Homeland

Bibliography:

• In Cuba I Was A German Shepherd (2001)
• Loving Che (2003)
• The Last War (May 2009)
• Adios, Happy Homeland (August 2011)