Vanishing Maps

February 1, 2023

Cristina Garc�a's Vanishing Maps tells the story of Cuban matriarch Celia del Pino family's, scattered to the United States, Germany, and Russia. Prepub Alert.

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May 1, 2023
Garcia revisits characters from Dreaming in Cuban for this rich if uneven story of the del Pino family. It’s 1999 and matriarch Celia del Pino, 90, remains one of the family’s lone holdouts still residing in Havana. She’s enamored with Gustavo, a married Spaniard with whom she shared a passionate night in 1934. Meanwhile, her grandson, Ivanito Villaverde, a translator and drag performer living in Berlin, is visited by apparitions of his dead mother, Felicia. One granddaughter, Irina del Pino, runs a brassiere factory in Moscow, while another, Pilar Puente, tries to balance single parenthood with her fledgling career as an artist in Los Angeles. Lourdes, Celia’s surviving daughter and Pilar’s mother, a baker in Miami, has become obsessed with the story of Eliseo González, a boy found clinging to life in the straits of Florida after his mother drowned as they fled Cuba. Celia pines for Gustavo and considers a trip to Granada to rekindle their passion. Worlds collide in Berlin: Pilar, with her six-year-old in tow, pays a surprise visit to Ivanito after a stormy encounter with Lourdes, while Irina travels there on business and meets a long-lost relative. Garcia piles on a bit too much backstory in the first half, though the narrative becomes much more intriguing once the family members reunite. Though a slow burn, this will appeal to readers of Cuban diasporic stories. Agent: Ellen Levine, Trident Media.

May 15, 2023
A sequel of sorts to the author's acclaimed first novel. In the follow-up to her beloved Dreaming in Cuban (1992), Garc�a revisits the multigenerational del Pino family, which has sprawled since we last saw them, from Miami to Los Angeles, with stops in Moscow and Berlin. Two decades have passed, and the willful Pilar, a teenager in Dreaming, is now a middle-aged sculptor with a young son of her own; the motherless Ivanito has grown into a polyglot drag queen; Lourdes, Pilar's mother, as imperious as ever, has involved herself in Miami politics; and Celia, the 90-something matriarch, is revisiting an old flame. Garc�a, who has published half a dozen novels since Dreaming, did not really need to come full circle, and perhaps it would have been better if she hadn't. Though her latest book has the same fluid momentum, flowing dialogue, and flights of magical realism, it doesn't have the same charming magic. Garc�a keeps trying to hit the same note. Again and again, she returns to vivid images from the earlier book--like Pilar's painting of the Statue of Liberty with a safety pin stuck through the nose--which, like carbon copies, lose their vibrancy with each repetition. The plotline isn't much to speak of, and the prose isn't quite as fresh as it might have been--there are all too many adverbs, so Celia, hospitalized, feels a "sharp twinge" where an IV is "snugly taped." A subplot about a long-lost twin feels like a stretch. All in all, the book has a kind of matte, lackluster quality that is especially disappointing when compared to Garc�a's earlier work. The del Pino family continues their machinations but without the same vibrancy.

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Starred review from May 1, 2023
Multilingual translator Ivanito Valverde performs drag and hooks up in the dark corners of Berlin. He is also Celia del Pino's grandson. Those familiar with Garc�a's work will recognize this dysfunctional family from her first novel, Dreaming in Cuban. Set at the turn of the twenty-firstcentury, this surprise sequel is told in four sections that follow the Del Pino cousins, siblings, and older (and eventually deceased) scions around the world. The upheaval of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 fractured the family, which refracted from Cuba to the U.S. and Europe. A swirl of sagas bursts from Ivanito's grief. His mother Felicia's ghost shows up at his apartment and, while he enjoys her company and craves her affection, she leaves an invisible halo on his head and dread about her intentions. Long-lost twins and lovers reunite while family members engage and enrage passionately at both extremes of the political spectrum. Thankfully, Ivanito's young nephew brings hope and inspires courage. Readers will commiserate with Ivanito through his trials and tribulations with problematic family members and emotional trauma as Garc�a serves up a sabroso (tasty) smorgasbord of muy human family foibles, from obsession to passion, forbearance, and all kinds of love.

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