lanagabriela99's review against another edition
5.0
A wonderful collection of short stories set in the Telex From Cuba universe. It might help to read Telex From Cuba before reading this collection, since most of the settings and characters are the same, but I can see it also serving as a good kind of prologue to Telex From Cuba.
souslespaveslapage's review against another edition
challenging
dark
reflective
tense
fast-paced
4.0
chrispy's review
mysterious
reflective
sad
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
bgg616's review against another edition
4.0
I am a fan of Rachel Kushner although I am discovering she is not loved by all. I didn't realize these stories were set primarily in Cuba but looking closely at the book jacket, the Cuban flag is recognizable. I read this in an hour. It is a portrayal of the decadent side of colonialism. One image that struck me was the French Nazi SS officer reflecting that the American Cadillacs roaming the streets of pre-revolution Cuba reminded him of the Nazis driving Mercedes through Paris. Chilling. While the time period is not defined, it can be estimated by the entrance of Batista (1940). The critical details is that this is post-Spanish American War and pre-Cuban Revolution of 1959. Rachel K is not the author, but coincidentally, as Kushner points out, has the same name. She was a prostitute found murdered in a Havana hotel room. A short book, full of intriguing details of the crimes of colonialism, and a portrayal of Havana I'd not seen before.
khakipantsofsex's review against another edition
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
Content Warnings
Minor: Genocide and Colonisation
djinnmartini's review against another edition
3.0
I recommend reading this INSTEAD of TELEX FROM CUBA. also had I known 2/3 of it was going to be early versions of that book I would've read it instead and probably enjoyed it more. anyway sorry to be cranky about it
agniguha01's review
4.0
A strange little book containing three stories that speak of a Cuban history - entangled with fact and fiction, colonialism, politics, corruption and so on.
blackoxford's review against another edition
4.0
Cuban History
The first of these three stories, ‘The Great Exception’, is a Borges-like counterfactual fake that tells the truth of Cuban national origins in the sexual fantasies of Queen Isabella. From the island’s discovery by Columbus, who is killed, cooked, eaten, and assimilated by the aboriginal inhabitants, to its development as a decaying tropical Paris, to its virtual annexation (along with the Kingdom of Hawaii) by the United States, the constant theme is sexual vice. The ‘exception’ in question seems to be the accidental discovery of the Americas. Or perhaps it refers to this latter military/political event, an exception to the myth of American exceptionalism. They did, of course, what any big country does to smaller ones - they enslaved it in imperial rule.
‘Debouchment’ covers the subsequent period in Cuban history, “the era after the Spanish ate the parrots to extinction (while the natives stuck to grilled banana heart), and before the Russians came, with their Brutalist architecture and their smoked pig’s fat.” This is a time, after the abolition of slavery, of the rationalisation of continuing racial and economic oppression. Deterioration continued but now “with amber Lalique windows, and the addition of cheval-de-frise on the low walls of Spanish colonial buildings, to prevent vagrants from sitting.” And the essentials of Cuban life remained constant: “syphilis, tobacco, and trees with fruit whose flesh is the pink of healthy mucus membranes.” But this all stopped abruptly when Castro’s bandits bombed the Pan-American Club.
The title story of Rachel K is a case study of the depravity of 1950’s Cuba. A former French Nazi masquerading as a diplomat tangles with a faux-French stripper with painted-on faux-net stockings. She is a prostitute who “makes a life out of twilight.” Like the country itself “The boundary between her private life and public life has blurred, as has the boundary between engaging her body only in intimate pleasures with people she trusts, and using it as an object she owns.” ‘K’, after all, is not just for Kushner, but also for what one uses in German to spell the name of the country.
In Havana the French Nazi “found occupied Paris all over again.” Better than Paris because it wasn’t occupied by other soldiers in the midst of war but by the corporate executives of international companies on the make. “It was occupied Paris, with Americans in Cadillacs instead of Germans in Mercedes.” Rachel ignores him, then teases him, then engages him in intimate conversation during which the “Nothingness” that is in these people, their un-mappable emptiness, continues to leak away into the recorded national past.
The first of these three stories, ‘The Great Exception’, is a Borges-like counterfactual fake that tells the truth of Cuban national origins in the sexual fantasies of Queen Isabella. From the island’s discovery by Columbus, who is killed, cooked, eaten, and assimilated by the aboriginal inhabitants, to its development as a decaying tropical Paris, to its virtual annexation (along with the Kingdom of Hawaii) by the United States, the constant theme is sexual vice. The ‘exception’ in question seems to be the accidental discovery of the Americas. Or perhaps it refers to this latter military/political event, an exception to the myth of American exceptionalism. They did, of course, what any big country does to smaller ones - they enslaved it in imperial rule.
‘Debouchment’ covers the subsequent period in Cuban history, “the era after the Spanish ate the parrots to extinction (while the natives stuck to grilled banana heart), and before the Russians came, with their Brutalist architecture and their smoked pig’s fat.” This is a time, after the abolition of slavery, of the rationalisation of continuing racial and economic oppression. Deterioration continued but now “with amber Lalique windows, and the addition of cheval-de-frise on the low walls of Spanish colonial buildings, to prevent vagrants from sitting.” And the essentials of Cuban life remained constant: “syphilis, tobacco, and trees with fruit whose flesh is the pink of healthy mucus membranes.” But this all stopped abruptly when Castro’s bandits bombed the Pan-American Club.
The title story of Rachel K is a case study of the depravity of 1950’s Cuba. A former French Nazi masquerading as a diplomat tangles with a faux-French stripper with painted-on faux-net stockings. She is a prostitute who “makes a life out of twilight.” Like the country itself “The boundary between her private life and public life has blurred, as has the boundary between engaging her body only in intimate pleasures with people she trusts, and using it as an object she owns.” ‘K’, after all, is not just for Kushner, but also for what one uses in German to spell the name of the country.
In Havana the French Nazi “found occupied Paris all over again.” Better than Paris because it wasn’t occupied by other soldiers in the midst of war but by the corporate executives of international companies on the make. “It was occupied Paris, with Americans in Cadillacs instead of Germans in Mercedes.” Rachel ignores him, then teases him, then engages him in intimate conversation during which the “Nothingness” that is in these people, their un-mappable emptiness, continues to leak away into the recorded national past.
meganzc's review against another edition
2.0
According to the New York Times review:
While I found the prose tasty on a line-by-line level, I found the stories dull and hard-to-follow. This may reflect more on me than the author... Still, it doesn't bode well when it takes a full week to read such a slim book.
"The Strange Case of Rachel K" delves into themes of ownership and agency, reinvention of self, the mystery and pull of exoticism, and the inevitable letdown once the exotic turns out to contain the same banal discontent as the familiar. The subtlest, most engaging story in the book, it yields new discoveries with every reading.
But whether the collection would still hold up with a weaker story in its place is difficult to say. The first two stories are steeped in atmospheric but florid language, and rarely feel like anything but the juvenilia they are-
While I found the prose tasty on a line-by-line level, I found the stories dull and hard-to-follow. This may reflect more on me than the author... Still, it doesn't bode well when it takes a full week to read such a slim book.