Next Year in Havana

I find this story to be very interesting and informative as well as entertaining. I like how the interactions of Marisol and her grandmother lives intertwined. 

I think I would be like Marisol and go to the country that my grandparents spoke of so well. Especially if I was given a great responsibility of bringing one back home.

There are many questions of Havana the way it was to what it is now. How the citizens of Cuba have looked too and hope for. And what they strive to do today. 

I can see the struggle that Elisa had of Pablo of what he believed, to what she only knew from how she was brought up. Marisol was seeing 1st hand how it came to be that the people who stayed in Cuba believed in a better country with a different person at the top. But also are treated no better.

The story between Elisa, her sisters, and parents with Pablo I enjoyed. Learning history isn't so bad. True there is sadness with their brother etc., joyful times and scary times. Makes all for a good book. Especially a slight twist at the end.

But for Luis he also felt there was something to fight for his country. But for his safety of life I could see why it is important to get him to America.

I really don't know what to say about this book. I read the history in the story and agree with a lot of it. Because I too have lived my history of my ancestors. For Ireland in some ways are the same. But at the end it is not the younger people struggle, but the generations before them.

We the Irish/Americans, Cuba/Americans can do so much with technology today to make it better for the generations to come. To keep the heritage alive without sacrificing integrity of self. For the Cuban citizens resenting the ones who fled to America, sad to know they felt that way. But they built a community to spread through another country for honor. Some of the places that were mentioned Miami, Key West only made me think I was standing maybe in that same spot as Elisa, 90 miles to Cuba. And her son Miguel listening in on a shell, as Bishop Kee welcomed tourist there with his blowing of the conch shell being populaized by his living. Miami dining on the sidewalk in one of the  paladars.

Even though I enjoyed the book. It did lag a big portion of the story. I feel it was hung up on a lot of adjectives of history. That made it for some long chapters that I just wanted to get to the point. And for that I give Next Year in Havana 4 

Some of my memorable parts of the book are my highlights on goodreads.