Pig’s Foot – Carlos Acosta

Read as leg 5 (Cuba) of the Bookpacking reading journey.

Pata de Puerco is the village in the Cuban hinterland that, the narrator tells us, is his ancestral home. His name is Oscar Mandinga, each element derived from the mismatched pair of friends, Jose Mandinga and Oscar Kontico, who were early Negro settlers there. Mandingos were tall and muscular whereas Konticos were pygmies, small but ferocious warriors; both were involved in the violent struggle to throw off slavery on the island.

From these two firm friends, and the two sisters they courted, sprang generations whose interactions form the human chain of the story that interweaves with Cuba’s troubled recent history. Early generations remain mired in the poverty and ignorance of the rural landscape before the arrival of education enables some of Oscar’s contemporaries to make the transition to Havana with all its opportunities and threats.

The narrator is relying on oral history handed down from grandparents, and much of the prose is reflective of this. However the narrative is punctuated periodically with outbursts that reveal it is being told while he is currently under some sort of interrogation. The nature and reason remains a mystery right to the end.

Familiarity with Cuban history and politics is assumed, and referred to in passing rather than related; but it is its impact on the characters that matters. Their personal histories change as the book progresses, with revelations of hidden relationships and parenthood to match any TV soap opera.

It is Oscar’s necessity to unravel this tangled web in order to follow his grandfather’s maxim that no man knows who he is until he knows his past, his history, and the history of his country.

The author was a renowned ballet dancer, a principal with some top international companies, but here shows another string to his creative bow with a story that paints a vivid picture of a country he seems both to love and despair of.

The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen

A more apposite title for this take on the great American novel could be “Life with the Lamberts” as we get a forensic examination of parents Alfred and Enid and their three grown up children – Chip, Gary and Denise.

As the book opens Alfred and Enid are in New York to embark on a cruise of the Canadian Atlantic coast, but are stopping en route to have lunch with Chip, who becomes first to take centre stage. He’s a failed academic (a career undermined by a penchant for young female students) who now writes unpaid for the obscure Warren Street Journal (his parents think it is the Wall Street Journal and he has failed to correct them) while working on the umpteenth rewrite of the screenplay that will launch his literary career. His parents’ visit is at an inconvenient time coinciding with a deadline for his script, his latest girlfriend walking out on him, and a new opportunity suddenly appearing.

Each family member has a turn in the spotlight to share their back story and perspective on the current state of relations.

Alfred, retired railroad engineer and executive, man of principle and too stubborn for his own (and his family’s) good, is now deteriorating physically with Parkinson’s and mentally with dementia. Enid is in good shape but is struggling to cope with Alfred; concerned about the children’s lives and obsessively intent on bringing them back home to St Jude “for one last Christmas”.

Gary is, to all appearances, ‘the successful one’; a banker in Philadelphia with an attractive wife, Caroline, who is too attractive for his comfort. She uses their three boys to play him like a fish on a line.

Daughter Denise is to me the most appealing. The youngest, she is wilful, resourceful and strong; getting what she wants (or what she thinks she wants) then, finding it unsatisfactory, throwing it away. She is a renowned chef, also in Philadelphia, and the one who exhibits most responsibility for Alfred and Enid.

It’s a big rambling book, the structure seemingly loose and wandering, with a style of prose that takes some getting used to. But it grew on me and eventually the diverse stories and the resonating family history coalesce in a satisfying manner as Enid’s “one last Christmas” takes shape and threatens to impact disproportionately on all their lives.

Maybe “The Corrections” is a suitable title after all.