Entries in Cuba (2)

Book Review: Reclaiming Paris by Fabiola Santiago via [TampaBay.com]

Saturday, February 20, 2010 at 6:26AM

Reclaiming Paris

A Novel

By Fabiola Santiago

Description

"Men are like perfumes. In an instant, with nothing but a whiff of judgment, I either love them or discard them."

	Reclaiming Paris: A Novel by Fabiola Santiago Buy new: $11.70 / Used from: $0.05 Usually ships in 24 hours

Marisol is an exuberant poet and historical archivist living in contemporary Miami. Like her adopted city, she's a sensual free spirit. Born in Cuba and transplanted at an early age to Florida, she nurses a nostalgia for the legendary island birthplace she barely remembers. She also harbors a passion for scents, donning a new perfume each time she takes on a new relationship. After the death of her beloved grandmother and a series of sensuous but disappointing romances, Marisol realizes that she must break free from the shackles of her history, abandon lost causes, and embrace the only real home she's ever had -- her own wandering heart. Freed at last from yearning for old Havana, "the Paris of the Caribbean," this romantic exile must embrace a new life. Although she cannot reclaim Havana, she can experience the real thing -- Paris -- so Marisol sets out with an open ticket to chart the course of her future.

Bridging the divide between the effervescent Miami of today and the mystical Cuba of yesteryear, Reclaiming Paris is a paean to place and memory, rich with humor, passion, and unforgettable characters.

Review: Fabiola Santiago's 'Reclaiming Paris' is a powerful work

William McKeen

Okay, before we get started talking about this book, maybe we need a cold shower.

There. All better now.

Reclaiming Paris is hot, not tawdry-romance-novel hot, but Garcia-Marquez-meets-Anais-Nin hot. The language is elegant and has the flavor, at times, of magical realism. Giving a plot synopsis won't do justice to the book, because it will come off sounding like a bodice ripper. It's not. With that caveat, we can tell you that it's the story of a young Cuban-born woman and her artistic, spiritual and sexual awakening.

Damn. Sounds like a romance novel. (Time for another shower, too.)

Okay, let's try again: Marisol is a poet and archivist in Miami. We meet her in present day, and the intensity of her affair with the suave and powerful Jose Antonio leads to a series of sexual reminiscences: the gringo boyfriend from her college days in Iowa (Iowa?), the picture-perfect episode in Paris and her loving relationship with her grandmother. The flashbacks to her abuela's early life read like a lost passage from Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Wherever Marisol goes, she carries her abuela with her as her conscience, and the strength of this bond between women that cannot be erased, even by death, is the heart that holds the book together.

The window to Marisol's story is perfume. She changes men, she changes her scent, a device to propel the narrative from exotic Miami to corn-fed Iowa City to the romantic pinnacle of Paris.

Through it all, Fabiola Santiago writes with clarity and grace. This is an astonishingly good book, filled with wisdom and great eroticism. The sex scenes would no doubt be clumsy in the hands of a male writer, but her writing is as startling and sensual as Nin's classic Delta of Venus.

Santiago is a longtime writer and editor for the Miami Herald. Add her name to the list of these other fine writers produced by that newsroom: Carl Hiaasen, Edna Buchanan and Dave Barry.

William McKeen teaches journalism at the University of Florida

	Siempre Paris (Reclaiming Paris; Spanish edition): Novela by Fabiola Santiago Buy new: $11.25 / Used from: $1.00 Usually ships in 24 hours

Siempre Paris (Reclaiming Paris; Spanish edition): Novela by Fabiola Santiago
Buy new: $11.25 / Used from: $1.00
Usually ships in 24 hours

Reclaiming Paris: A spiritual journey of self-discovery

The State, February 3, 2009

...By Fabiola Santiago (Atria, 304 pages, $24.95) Marisol is a poet and a museum historian. She?s also a lover of perfumes and men. All these interests intertwine and shape her ...

A spiritual journey of self-discovery

Boston Globe, January 30, 2009

...and follows her heart to Miami, Iowa, Spain, and France. Marisol, the first-person narrator of Miami Herald writer Fabiola Santiago's debut novel, 'Reclaiming Paris,' searches for many things. She looks for a man who will fill the emotional ...

'Reclaiming Paris' is a rich, spiritual journey of self-discovery

Boston Globe, January 30, 2009