August 7, 2010
Beautiful Maria of My Soul by Oscar Hijuelos is the follow-up to his wonderful and popular novel, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. Beautiful Maria of My Soul is a frothy, funny, and very randy romp, an over-the-top melodrama about the love between Nestor Castillo, doomed hero of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, and Maria, the woman who served as inspiration for the biggest hit of the Mambo Kings, a song entitled Beautiful Maria of My Soul. Get it? In The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, we got Nestor's story,and in Beautiful Maria of My Soul, we get Maria's.
Maria's story is the story of a poor country girl who leaves her village for the big city, Havana, and eventually finds fame and a bit of fortune as a dancer in second-rate nightclubs. Her stunning beauty -- which we hear about again and again and again -- propels Maria forward, giving her mobility and opportunity, and Maria makes the most of what she can get. More obsessed with herself and her needs than with any man, her affection for Nestor is not enough to surpass her belief that he is a poor musician who may never find success or make enough money to give her the security she needs. So despite having the best sex of her life with Nestor -- which we hear about again and again and again -- Maria dumps him and returns to a sugar daddy who beats her but keeps her well-dressed, housed, and fed. Her rejection forms the basis of Nestor's aching ballad, Beautiful Maria of My Soul, and when the song becomes a hit around the world, Maria has to listen to wherever she goes.
How Maria reacts to the bolero, played on radios and on the hit TV show I Love Lucy, is the basis for the second part of Hijuelos' novel (the first part having set up the childhood of Maria, her escape to Havana, and the early flourishing of her career and sexuality). She begins to regret dumping Nestor and plots to get him back. Things don't quite work out for her (and certainly not for Nestor) but she plows on, moving herself and her child to Miami after the sugar daddy goes to prison under Castro's regime. In Miami she finds new loves (i.e., sexual partners), raises her child, and grows old.
As an homage to Cuba, and an illustration of its professed reputation as having the most beautiful women, the most macho men, the most fulfilling sexual encounters, and the most sincere love of patria, Beautiful Maria of My Soul works. As a believable novel of love and sex and the relationship between the two, the novel fails. But it is not a true novel, it is a bolero, a romance of extreme longing and melancholic regret, of searing passion and lost love. And as a bolero, it sings.
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