Dancing to “Almendra”

Montero, Mayra; translated by Edith Grossman. Dancing to “Almendra” : A Novel. New York: Picador, 2005.

Can I say the cover alone got me? I’m not a big fan of hippos and there, on the cover is a dead hippo. Brilliant. Or, as someone else told me recently, “hippos are jerks.” But, that is either here nor there as far as the plot of Dancing to “Almendra” is concerned.

Here is the benign review I put on LibraryThing:This is a convoluted tale about a young reporter looking to make it big in pre-Castro Cuba’s world of journalism. Characters are drawn as tragic, eccentric, needy and sometimes self-absorbed.
At the center is Joaquin Porrata, the weak-willed entertainment reporter, sent to cover the death of a hippo at the zoo. He finds himself entangled in a much darker plot. There is the mafia (to which the death of the hippo is directly related), eccentric circus performers with leprosy and amputations, a zoo keeper with too many nicknames who chops up horses as food for the zoo carnivores, prostitution, violence, and even a murder that hits closer to home than Joaquin bargained for.
On the other side of the story is Yolanda (she also has other names). As the one-armed, former assistant to a magician with leprosy, her story is just as tragic. While Joaquin and Yolanda’s stories do not mesh well with the plot, the telling of both sides enhances the story of their romance.
Because I read a translation of Dancing to Almendra I cannot be sure Mayra Montero’s language is all her own. While the voice moves masterfully between Joaquin and Yolanda, direct translations could be lost in description.

Not too exciting but I’m paranoid I’m not a team player. More on that later.

Favorite (weird) line: “with a voice like hysterical glass” (p 4). What, exactly, does that mean?