Havana Lunar

De: Robert Arellano

Narrado por: Jonathan Davis

Inspired by 50 years of Cuban literary noir, from Cold Tales by Virgilio Piera to Reinaldo Arenas' Before Night Falls, Robert Arellano's Havana Lunar intertwines an insider testimony on the collapse of socialist Cuba with a psychological mystery.

Robert Arellano's parents fled Havana in 1960. He has been working on Havana Lunar since 1992 when, as a student in Brown University's graduate writing program, he visited Cuba on a research fellowship. He has returned ten times, chronicling the Revolution in journalism, essay, and song.

©2009 Robert Arellano (P)2009 Audible, Inc.

Jonathan Davis renders it enjoyable

The story is alright. Works if you can believe a doctor in his thirties can fall in love with an underage prostitute and risk his life to help smuggle his Lolita out of the Cuba.

I'm a Cubaphile and enjoyed the narrations of the life of the common people. Arellano depictions were easily visualized.

Davis's narration, as always, was excellent.

I feel a little cheated as there were often sentences, important to the plot that were in Spanish. I even tried to enter them in Google Translator, but I couldn't find the translations.

insight into Castro's Cuba

Is there anything you would change about this book?

more about the break-up. more about the split family in Havana and the father in Miami -- seemed off stage

What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)

too predictible and quick

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

yes-- just to see the old American cars.

Passion and danger in Castro's Cuba.

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

Brutal and romantic don't often appear in the same sentence describing a very unexpected storyline. Here they do. Hauntingly worth the experience.

What did you like best about this story?

The complexities in personalities and relationships was compelling, occasionally overwhelming.

Have you listened to any of Jonathan Davis’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

No.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

Such vivid imagery carried me emotionally throughout...such yearning, despair, disgust, loyality is reminicent of Carson McCullers, Graham Greene.

Insight into an unknown world.

Didn’t always understand the Spanish though it added to the immersion in the story in Cuba.

I loved this audio

If you could sum up Havana Lunar in three words, what would they be?

it falls into the noir category of literature

What did you like best about this story?

it told the story of life in cuba, at the same time as delivering a most intriguing mystery.

What about Jonathan Davis’s performance did you like?

the narrator was perfect. I loved the way he slipped seamlessly between English and Spanish. Although I am not a Spanish speaker, I understood what he was saying.
His understated way of telling the story was masterful. I would like to listen to similar things from him.

Was there a moment in the book that particular moved you?

when I realized that my preconceptions of how the story was progressing were wrong.

Any additional comments?

let me know when there others like this.