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Original Title:	The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love
ISBN:	0140143912 (ISBN13: 9780140143911)
Edition Language:	English
Series:	Mambo Kings #1
Setting:	New York City, New York(United States) Manhattan, New York City, New York(United States)
Literary Awards:	Pulitzer Prize for Fiction (1990), National Book Critics Circle Award Nominee for Fiction (1989), National Book Award Finalist for Fiction (1989)

The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (Mambo Kings #1)

Oscar Hijuelos

Paperback | Pages: 407 pages

Rating: 3.69 | 11410 Users | 493 Reviews

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As the weather heats up it is easy to envision oneself on a beach with a rum and Coke in hand. The preferred beverage in Cuba before Castro's take over, rum invokes images of Havana as a city teeming with night life and rivaling Miami as the gateway to Latin America. It is with this sensuous imagery at hand that I selected Oscar Hijuelos' Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love as the next book in my ongoing Pulitzer challenge. The first Hispanic to win the award, Hijuelos' steamy book transports its readers back to a classy time when Mambo and its musicians were indeed Kings.

Brothers Cesar and Nestor Castillo hailed from the Oriente province of Cuba. From the simple peasant class, neither had much of a future, especially with a demanding father who expected them to stay on the farm. One day Cesar heard a local band leader practicing, demanded lessons, and the rest is history. Soon, Cesar played his way out of Oriente to Santiago, Havana, and eventually New York. Regarded as a top band leader alongside Nestor, a gifted trumpet player, the brothers founded the Mambo Kings band and catapulted to the top of the Latin music circuit in New York during the late 1940s.

Leaving Cuba even before the revolution was not without its share of anguish. Cesar epitomized Hispanic machismo culture and bedded one woman after another. He tried his hand at marriage but grew restless, and his wife divorced him, forcing him to leave his daughter Mariela behind on the island. Nestor did not share his brother's cockiness. A introvert and brooding man, he fell for a pretty girl named Maria and engaged in a long affair with her, only to see her marry another man. Nestor never got over this heartbreak, even after marrying his wife Dolores in New York and having two children, Eugenio and Leticia. This torment the brothers felt lead them to write their one hit song-- Dulce Maria de mi Alma [Beautiful Maria of my Soul] that nearly lead them to stardom.

A chance meeting with Cuban star Desi Arnaz lead the brothers to perform Dulce Maria de mi Alma on the I Love Lucy Show. At the time, especially as Castro continued to gain power in Cuba, all Cubans living in the United States stuck close together, even Arnaz who had made it big as a Hollywood star. After this performance, Cesar dwelt on this episode for the rest of his life, reminiscing on his one shining moment and reminding all of his friends and acquaintances that he is the famous Mambo Kings who once performed with Desi Arnaz. Nestor tragically passed away a few years later leaving behind a young family, but Cesar continued to look fondly at this experience on television for better or worse.

Hijuelos writes this poignant tale as a two sided record complete with coda. He tells Cesar's story in flashback as both Cesar and his nephew Eugenio look back at a time when Cesar was the Mambo King of New York. In addition to leading a band, Cesar worked a full time day job to support himself and his sister-in-law and her family as well as his friends and musicians and a myriad of Cubans just off the boat. Cesar also oozed machismo until his dying day, bedding one woman after another in true Latin lover form. The prose dripped of sensuous love mixed with pain, of both love lost and the schism of Cubans in the United States and the island following the revolution. As I read this tale of lust and heartbreak, I kept singing Cuban hits such as Guantamera in my mind, setting Cesar Castillo's conflicted life to music. The Mambo King will be long remembered by me as I felt a twinge of sympathy for this man who could not relate to women except in bed while leading a conflicted life.

With luscious writing that is could also be construed as an homage to his native Cuba, Hijuelos has merited the Pulitzer for his poignant tale. A story of immigrants who brushed with fame, were scorned by love, and maintained their machismo Cuban culture throughout their lives, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love is a scintillating tale. I had previously read Hijuelos' The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O'Brien and as before was enamored by his writing. A worthy torch bearer as being the first Hispanic authored book to earn the Pulitzer, Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love is a jewel of a book for me at 4.5 sparkling stars.

List Of Books The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (Mambo Kings #1)

Title	:	The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love (Mambo Kings #1)
Author	:	Oscar Hijuelos
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	Deluxe Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 407 pages
Published	:	1990 by Penguin Group (first published 1989)
Categories	:	Fiction. Music

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Ratings: 3.69 From 11410 Users | 493 Reviews

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I did not have big hopes going into The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, I was hoping to be surprised. Unfortunately, there were only moments of surprise, but not enough for this one to vault over the three-star mark. It beat out Billy Bathgate for the 1990 Pulitzer and as I have not yet read that book, I have to assume it was mediocre and as there were no other runner-ups, that year must have been a downer literary speaking. Maybe they should have taken a closer look at Get Shorty or Hocus Pocus

An interesting meditation of life, family and mortality -- but told by a garrulous 62-year-old guy drenched in whisky and smoking a Havana cigar reminiscing. And I enjoyed it. It tells the unflinching story of two brothers from Cuba, Cesar and Nestor Castillo, who come to New York seeking their fame and fortune as mambo musicians. The brothers are young, poor and, like all young people, obsessed with sex and partying. It was amazing to watch the brothers grow as the novel progresses, especially

Looking at her, Nestor felt faint-hearted: she was more beautiful than the sea, than the morning light, than a wildflower field, and her whole body, agitated and sweaty from her struggles, gave off an aromatic female scent, somewhere between meat and perfume and ocean air, that assailed Nestor's nostrils, sank down into his body like mercury, and twisted in his gut like Cupid's naughty arrow. He was so shy that he couldn't look at her anymore, and she liked this, because men were always looking

I really wanted to like this book, but I just could never summon sympathy or interest in the main character, Cesar. This is a rich and sorrowful book, filled with longing, regret, heartache, and loss. The depiction of Latino life and culture could have been exceptional, but was ruined by the never-ending stream of machismo and male sexuality. And the repetitive telling of the 'I Love Lucy' scene made it seem that I was reading the same story over and over. I get that it was a significant event

January 29 - January 31, 2019DID NOT FINISH25% [Pg. 104]Zero StarsThis book was just not for me. SO much machismo. SO much penis talk. SO much sex and thoughts of sex and talk about sex and sex and sex and sex. WOW. I am not a prude by any stretch of the imagination, but at several points I felt like I was back in South America dealing with some of the men I met there and their own "issues" with machismo. I [as a white woman in this day and age] am clearly not the target audience for this book.

A plump, juicy, sexy tropical fruit of a novel!Its immediately evident why it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize; as a matter of fact, it comes from a proud line of family sagas-- all of them conjoined fatefully with the history of our nation. The Castillo Bros. ("castle" siblings) are the Kings of their music and major purveyors of the Cuban-American Zeitgeist. Of course, the story is tragicomic... sad but not in a completely unfamiliar way. Yes, this one seems to have inspired later Pulitzer

I cannot BELIEVE this book won a Pulitzer. I bought it because of the shiny red cover with the big silver medal-looking sticker on the front (yes, that is how I judge books). The Cuban history/living in New York as a Cuban/music scene perspective was interesting, but it was overshadowed by the long, long, LONG woe-is-me sad-sack self-destructive fatalistic characters who were, for the most part, unlikable and unrelatable, and the pages and pages of sex. Not sexy sex; DH Lawrence this is not.