Waiting for Snow in Havana

Confessions of a Cuban Boy

By: Carlos Eire

Narrated by: David Drummond

National Book Award, Nonfiction, 2003

A childhood in a privileged household in 1950s Havana was joyous and cruel, like any other - but with certain differences. The neighbor's monkey was liable to escape and run across your roof. Surfing was conducted by driving cars across the breakwater. Lizards and firecrackers made frequent contact.

Carlos Eire's childhood was a little different from most. His father was convinced he had been Louis XVI in a past life. At school, classmates with fathers in the Batista government were attended by chauffeurs and bodyguards. At a home crammed with artifacts and paintings, portraits of Jesus spoke to him in dreams and nightmares. Then, in January 1959, the world changed: Batista was suddenly gone, a cigar-smoking guerrilla took his place, and Christmas was cancelled. The echo of firing squads was everywhere. And, one by one, the author's schoolmates begin to disappear - spirited away to the United States. Carlos would end up there himself, without his parents, never to see his father again.

Narrated with the urgency of a confession, Waiting for Snow in Havana is both an ode to a paradise lost and an exorcism. More than that, it captures the terrible beauty of those times when we are certain we have died - and then are somehow, miraculously, reborn.

©2003 Carlos Eire (P)2011 Tantor

Critic reviews

"As painful as Eire's journey has been, his ability to see tragedy and suffering as a constant source of redemption is what makes this book so powerful." ( Publishers Weekly)

Poignant Coming of Age Story

Moving story about a boy's life in Cuba during the period of Castro's coming to power.

Wonderful

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

Both, and for the same reasons... The people, the country, the times and the culture.

Any additional comments?

Just wonderful, I can finally recommend a book to my American friends that explains what we Cuban American immigrants really experienced in pre and post-revolutionary Cuba. I am so glad that this story is finally being told and hopefully understood.

Poorly chosen narrator

I am the child of a Cuban immigrant and was very excited to listen to this book. The story is very different from my family's, as is every immigrant story. It was interesting, but I really struggled with the narrator. I'm sure he's great when imparting another story, but this one is told in the first person by someone who not only speaks Spanish as a first language, but throws Spanish words in throughout the story. Listening to a non-Spanish speaker say Spanish words with an audible American accent when playing the role of a native Spanish speaker was terrible. It constantly broke down the 4th wall and, for me, made the story difficult to listen to. Bad casting!

A must-read for descendants of Cuban refugees

Being a daughter of Cuban refugees, I’ve always wanted to understand what it was like for my family to go through what they did. There are a lot of similarities to their stories. The only thing I wish they would have done was to have a Cuban narrate for the proper pronunciations of Spanish words.

Sad tales of a man’s youth.

This was not as good as I hoped it would be. Instead of a novel, it was a memoir packed with the author’s festering, negative emotions. Perhaps the author could have better dealt with his feelings in therapy. Or perhaps a therapist recommended he write about them as his therapy. It also occurred to me that the narrator of the audiobook may have sounded angrier than the author felt.