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Changó's Beads And Two-Tone Shoes (2011)

by William Kennedy(Favorite Author)

3.21 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0670022977 (ISBN13: 9780670022977)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Viking Adult

series

The Albany Cycle

review 1: This is a hard book to describe. Daniel Quinn is a reporter following after his namesake and grandfather. He begins in Cuba in 1938 where he is speaking with Hemingway in a local bar. During that time he meets Renata, his future wife. She is exotic and in love with love. Finding herself on the run after the Directorio, a rebel group she is involved with attempts to murder the Cuban president Batista, she and Quinn seek out Fidel Castro. After marrying Renata, Quinn talks to Fidel about his rebel army but when he returns from the jungle he finds Renata missing. The story picks up in Albany, New York where Bobby Kennedy has just been shot. The story then follows Quinn and friends during the race riots. The book kept my attention but at times I was wondering how everything ti... moreed together. The last page is the answer. For me it was like hearing a joke, not understanding it, but 2 hours later you start chuckling and say "Now I get it!"
review 2: The book is in two main section, the first and most fun is set in Cuba while Fidel is still in the mountains during the revolution. The main character, a young journalist, first meets Hemingway in La Floridita, falls in love with a beautiful gun runner & devotee of Chango, and then goes on to meet Fidel. Most of these same characters, and many many more, we meet again in the second, sometimes interminable, section many years later in a politically corrupt Albany NY, the night of Bobby Kennedys death & during a race riot. The most interesting character in this section is the jounalist Quinn's father who has dementia, knows everyone and still lives in a much earlier world. Music & dancing are very present in both sections. Quinn's father is a champion waltz dancer. Sometimes the book is more fun than others. I got bogged down in the second half, but then things picked up. less

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