Cuba Diaries

March 11, 2002
In this collection of her diary entries, housewife Tattlin describes the four years she and her family spent living in Cuba in the 1990s while the Communist country was adjusting to a liberalized economy and a shift in tourist policy. Living amid severe economic imbalance, "tourist apartheid" imposed upon locals, shortages of every conceivable household need (Tattlin's list of supplies extends over two pages) and a social architecture frozen in the 1950s, Tattlin and family inhabit an upscale Havana townhouse accompanied by a staff of seven. Her writing is clear and lively, her observances astute and witty. The record of her daily excursions has her searching for fresh produce, enrolling her children in swimming and dance lessons, visiting the pediatrician and hosting state dinners with guests the likes of Fidel Castro. She also avidly details daily living conditions with her servants and how she makes friends with the people in her neighborhood. But over the course of the book, the people she meets are passive, showing no resistance to Tattlin's questions and curiosity. Readers might get the sense that Tattlin is meeting the same characters time after time. In addition, her brief recollections leave little room for viewing the inner workings of her family or their relationships to one another: "Nick is depressed. He always gets depressed... when the kids and I take off." Despite these shortcomings, however, Tattlin's book is an enjoyable, warm trip.

April 1, 2002
Even with the tentative opening of travel and activity between the United States and Cuba, there is still a serious lack of information about the country. This book redresses the balance, but only partly. The pseudonymous author is the American wife of a European businessman stationed in Havana in the mid-1990s, when the country was struggling with economic problems related to the loss of financial support from the Soviet Union. In this four-year diary of her stay, she provides a vivid and unusual perspective on what it was like to live in Cuba during this difficult time. But while she aims to describe everyday life there, her day-to-day experience was quite different from that of most Cubans. Her family lived in a large home with several servants and had a large income even if there wasn't much to buy and their dinner guests included Fidel Castro himself. Nevertheless, this book is well written and enjoyable. Of interest to Latin American collections as well as libraries with travel books. Mark L. Grover, Brigham Young Univ., Provo, UT

Copyright 2002 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2002
When her husband, a European energy consultant, accepted a posting in Havana in the early 1990s, the author, an American, resolved to keep a diary of her time in Cuba. Adopting the pseudonym Isadora Tattlin (all the identities in the diary have been disguised for protection against reprisals by the Cuban government), she eloquently recorded her daily experiences as a wife, a mother, and a foreigner in a land fraught with mystery, adventure, and unique promise. Unflinchingly documenting the wild beauty of the landscape, the incredible poverty of the general population, the essential futility of the governmental bureaucracy, and the charming affability of their many Cuban friends and neighbors, she provides an insider's glimpse into a country and a culture that has remained an enigma for the past 40 years. This fascinating journal will enthrall scores of American readers understandably curious about our forbidden neighbor to the south.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2002, American Library Association.)