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Beautiful Maria of My Soul

by Oscar Hijuelos

3.13 · rating details · 205 ratings · 73 reviews

In 1950s Manhattan, Nestor and Cesar Castillo play the sumptuous mambo beats of their native Cuba, where their biggest hit, “Beautiful Maria of My Soul,” earns them a spot on “I Love Lucy” –but their hopes for the future are dashed by a tragic accident. Hijuelos returns to the story of his Pulitzer-Prize winning The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, this time telling it from...more

Hardcover, 352 pages

Published June 1st 2010 by Hyperion

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Aug 06, 2010

Linda rated it

I hadn't read a lot of books about the Cuban experience, so this book taught me several things about the culture and what Maria does to leave her poor background. The author won the Pulitzer for his first book "Mambo Kings," in which Maria appears, and I was eager to read what happened to her. She's a very complex character. Warning -some people might be put off by how risque the book is.

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Apr 02, 2010

Laura rated it

Shelves: mt-bookpile-2010

This is historical fiction and a sequel to The Mambo Kings, telling the story of the Maria behind the Castillo's bolero "Beautiful Maria of My Soul". The problem for me was, I didn't care. Perhaps by design, Maria is a cold character - beautiful, at first naive, and just, well, not a character I related to at all. Her choices, her life, her problems, nothing made me really care about her.

Perhaps if I'd read The Mambo Kings I'd feel differently but since I didn't read it....more

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Feb 21, 2011

Florinda rated it

Shelves: fiction, review, copy, arc, 2010review

I read Oscar Hijuelos award-winning novel The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love nearly 20 years ago, when it was first published, and never gave much thought to its having a sequel. But when I learned that it had one - told from the perspective of the woman who inspired the fictional Castillo brothers best-known song, Beautiful Maria of My Soul - I remembered enough about the original novel to be interested.[return][return]Maria is a woman who seems to exist primarily under the male gaze; h...moreI read Oscar Hijuelos award-winning novel The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love nearly 20 years ago, when it was first published, and never gave much thought to its having a sequel. But when I learned that it had one - told from the perspective of the woman who inspired the fictional Castillo brothers best-known song, Beautiful Maria of My Soul - I remembered enough about the original novel to be interested.[return][return]Maria is a woman who seems to exist primarily under the male gaze; her most remarkable quality - not just to those male gazers, but to herself - is her physical beauty. Descriptions of her face, hair, and traffic-stopping body abound in the novel - and I m not sure a woman would have written her that way. As the review quote mentions, there is more to her, though; the sections of the novel that focus on other aspects of the character - her illiterate country upbringing, her drive to educate herself, her motherhood - were some of the parts I liked most, and I don t think there were enough of them. There was more than enough about her looks, her desirability, and the sexual aspects of her relationships, though, including the skill and physical attributes of her lovers - and that all came across to me in a male voice, despite the fact that the protagonist is female.[return][return]As for the song-inspiring love between Maria and Nestor Castillo - my take on that is that theirs was a hormone-driven connection that they believed must therefore be a romantic one. Even in the midst of it, Maria realized they didn t have a lot to talk about. Had they stayed together - that is, had she not refused him because she felt his ambitions were too narrow - biology dictates that the fires would have subsided eventually, and I m not sure they d have had much beyond that.[return][return]Hijuelos writing is vivid and descriptive throughout, bringing mid-century, pre-Castro Cuba to life, and generously sprinkled with Spanish words and phrases; I just would have preferred less description of some aspects. My favorite part of the book was its final section, an amusingly meta twist in which the author becomes a character in his own novel when he writes the novel that first told Maria and Nestor s story, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. Up until then, I d have called Beautiful Maria of My Soul my most disappointing read of the year; while it kept my attention, I didn t always want it to. I think it would be of interest primarily to readers who recall the earlier novel, and would also appeal to fans of Latino-American literature for its depictions of pre-revolutionary Cuba and the Cuban-American exile community in Miami. I m not sorry I read it, but I m sorry I didn t like it better.(less)

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Aug 22, 2010

Bookmarks Magazine rated it

Shelves: sept-oct-2010

Though Beautiful Maria of My Soul may not match the emotional depth of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, critics generally considered Hijuelos's new novel a success. A seasoned storyteller, Hijuelos vividly evokes the vibrant lost world of prerevolutionary Havana, the Cuban Revolution, and modern-day Miami, and he audaciously inserts himself into the narrative's contemporary scenes to bring the story full circle--a device commended by the critics. However, Maria, defined by her appearance, fai...more

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Mar 28, 2011

Jessica Knauss rated it

At times, Maria reminded me of the mother in The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, unsympathetic, one-dimensional, and living in the past, but then at other times, principally when she's convincing herself that she loves Nestor, she seems an enchantingly hopeless romantic. So she has two sides, but the other characters don't develop and we only ever see one side of them. I almost dare to think that, like the Oscar Wao book, the author has no real sympathy for female characters. They remain t...moreAt times, Maria reminded me of the mother in The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, unsympathetic, one-dimensional, and living in the past, but then at other times, principally when she's convincing herself that she loves Nestor, she seems an enchantingly hopeless romantic. So she has two sides, but the other characters don't develop and we only ever see one side of them. I almost dare to think that, like the Oscar Wao book, the author has no real sympathy for female characters. They remain too mysterious. We're seeing Maria's story not from her perspective, but from the perspective of one of her salivating admirers. That said, the prose pulls the story along nicely. In the end it's a nicely written love story in which no one has ever really loved anyone, a statement about being extracted from one's homeland and the incredible loneliness that comes with the sense of never belonging anywhere. Read from that perspective, it's a very powerful book.

I haven't read The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, although I did see the movie when it came out, so I don't know to what extent this book differs from the first book. Although the author's self-insertion in the last part of this book, complete with great reviews of the Mambo Kings and its movie, was self-indulgent, I enjoyed the way it made the last part of the book a meta-book. The song in the movie is different than the song in the "real life" of this book, the movie only showed Maria for a few minutes and she feels like a minor role in the play of life. The story starts to proliferate in all kinds of different iterations, starting to become something eternal. The characters' objections to some of the details of the story within the story made them more real to me even as the fourth wall was torn down.

This was an advance reading copy, and it was rife with type-os and unintentional mistakes in the Spanish. The rendering of the Spanish, with an English translation right after, was a little wearisome. It doesn't add anything to the story if it's that simple to translate, anyway, so just stick with the English in most cases.(less)

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Dec 22, 2010

Bill rated it

Several themes are intertwined in this not totally successful novel. Among them is the fictional biography of Beautiful Maria, her career, her lovers, and most importantly, the love she has for her daughter Teresita. Another theme is Maria's love of country especially a valley in Pinar del Rio, her family home. This is offset by a description of Havana's seedy side before the Castro revolution. Finally, there is the song, Beautiful Maria of My Soul written by her dreamy and extremely passionate...moreSeveral themes are intertwined in this not totally successful novel. Among them is the fictional biography of Beautiful Maria, her career, her lovers, and most importantly, the love she has for her daughter Teresita. Another theme is Maria's love of country especially a valley in Pinar del Rio, her family home. This is offset by a description of Havana's seedy side before the Castro revolution. Finally, there is the song, Beautiful Maria of My Soul written by her dreamy and extremely passionate lover, Nestor Castillo.

After travelling from Pinar del Rio to Havana, Maria, innocent and illiterate, becomes a dancer in a second rate night club. She avoids becoming a prostitute. Many other dancers engaged in the trade. She does, however, become the mistress of Ignacio Fuentes, a gangster. Lazaro, an elderly black man, teaches her to read. Maria becomes more confident, independent and firm. Then she meets handsome and well endowed Nestor Castillo, a guitar player. They fall in love and have steamy sex. To her everlasting regret, Maria breaks the relationship believing there is no future with a poor musician.

After taking over, Castro tried to reform Havana and closed the seedy clubs where Maria danced. She and three year old Teresita flee to Miami where they experience much hardship. Eventually this is overcome and Teresita becomes an ontological pediatrician.

Hijuelos has several problems. His ending, which some may call daring, while others will consider it to be very poorly chosen, is the greatest problem. In the novel's ending chapters, he introduces himself, as Oscar Hijuelos the writer. He describes several meetings with his fictional characters. Hijuelos is also redundant. Maria's beauty is noted all too often. He also uses Spanish words and phrases, sometimes immediately translated to English but often not, causing a loss of thought.

Beautiful Maria does not live up to his earlier book, Mambo Kings. Mari's life is mildly interesting, but the book is justified by the strong descriptions of pre-revolutionary Havana and post- revolutionary Miami.
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Jan 02, 2011

Deb rated it

Shelves: fiction, women

I have to admit that it has been so many years since I read "The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love" that I barely remembered that the song "Beatiful Maria of My Soul" helped to make the Castillo brothers famous. The story of Maria, the woman who inspired Nestor Castillo to write the song, begins in a small village in Cuba where Maria lived with her family, then moves with Maria to Havana, where she met and fell in love with Nestor, and eventually to Miami, where Maria raises he...more

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Jun 28, 2010

J.T. Dutton rated it

I passionately loved Mambo Kings Played Songs of Love. Beautiful Maria of My Soul, settling into the negative space of Mambo Kings deals with a darker deck of cards. The sex between Beautiful Maria and her many lovers including Nestor Castillo is magically erotic in its beginnings but becomes less satisfactory as the pages turn, as if we the readers age with beautiful Maria and begin to see the world and her character with harder eyes.
A writer who risks distance from his main character an...more

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Aug 28, 2010

Siria rated it

Shelves: 21st-century, american-fiction, by-poc, historical-fiction

God, this was dreadful. The only way this book could have been more a straight male fantasy is if it had been narrated by a penis—and believe me, there enough descriptions of improbably huge penises in Beautiful María of my Soul that such a narrative device wouldn't have been an enormous stretch. The protagonist, María, is a man's bland idea of a beautiful woman; I never believed in her as a real person. Her great love affair with Nestor seems to be based mostly on the fact that they're both goo...more

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Feb 15, 2011

Yoonmee rated it

Shelves: fiction, latino-a

I can't decide if this is an amazing piece of literature or a somewhat smutty story about a loose woman. Funny, I'm not usually this torn. I enjoyed the story (read it in less than 3 days), but at the same time I got a little bit tired of Maria telling us how beautiful she was, how much sex she had, etc. Don't get me wrong, I love a good sex scene as much as anyone else, but I got bored hearing all about how large Nestor's penis was. Good grief. Is this a great piece of literature? Is Nestor's l...more

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Mar 30, 2010

Tara Chevrestt rated it

Shelves: latinas, historical-fiction, women-that-really-existed-fiction, arc, 2010-release

Halfway thru the reading of this novel, I had to drop it and run to the computer and open itunes where I proceeded to listen to The Mambo Kings for what may have been the first time in my life. My interest was picqued. I didn't buy this book to learn about the Mambo Kings. I got it cause the subject matter appealed to me. Maria, a Cuban woman so beautiful, she inspired a hit song...

Surprisingly, I actually enjoyed reading about the beginnings of the Mambo Kings, about love struc...more

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Sep 04, 2010

Mag rated it

Shelves: audio, cuba

Just when I decided that this book was a complete waste of my time, the author appeared in the novel creating an interesting intrusion of non-fiction into fiction, and the story somewhat redeemed itself.

Designed as a sequel to Mambo Kings, the novel is about the object of Nestor’s love- Beautiful Maria. Beautiful Maria is, as the name suggests, beautiful. An illiterate peasant girl, fairly reasonable and levelheaded, Beautiful Maria makes her way up in the dance clubs of Havana, but...more

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Aug 15, 2010

Frank rated it

I read the mambo Kings when it first came out. I loved it then (although I did not care or understood Maria). This sort of sequel is just OK, I still do not get Maria who never develops beyond her physical beauty which seems to be the only thing that matters to her. Cesar's letter to her describes my feelings as well! BTW, enough with the enormous pinga, it is just as silly as Maria's overwhelming beauty. Nonetheless interesting specially for a cubano.
I wonder if the me of today would lik...more

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Jan 06, 2012

Lou Cordero rated it

· review of another edition

Shelves: ipod, listened-to-audio

My main attraction to this book was two-fold. The character of Maria was wonderfully written. She was an innocent girl who turned into a selfish and vain women. She was beautiful by all accounts and began to believe she was beautiful. She gave up true love for and desire for financial comfort and regretted it for the rest of her life. I also like that all the characters were spanish and the sprinkling of spanish with the english dialogue made me miss my youth.

It was a worthwhile book...more

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Jul 05, 2010

Sarah rated it

Shelves: novel

Revisiting his 1989 Pulitzer Prize-winning The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, Hijuelos tells the story of the muse behind the Mambo Kings biggest hit. Maria Garcia y Ciufuentes begins the book as a 17-year-old illiterate country bumpkin who must quickly learn street smarts in Havana's club scene in the 1940s and '50s. As a headlining dancer at the numerous second-tier clubs of that era, Maria eventually meets successful gangster Ignacio who sets her up with a comfortable life, but is anything b...more

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Feb 09, 2011

Ann rated it

I have always wanted to go to Cuba and love Cuban jazz, so I loved the descriptions of Havana and life there. However, I thought that there was too much explicit sex in the book. The play by play descriptions of the sex acts did not add anything to the book. Perhaps the author was trying to relive his youth and his sexual fantacies. The main message I got from the book was the passion of young love, and the tenderness of aged love. Also, Maria failed to listen to her heart.

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Jun 20, 2010

Alecia rated it

I read The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love years ago and enjoyed it very much. This novel about "beautiful Maria", a character in the first novel, tells her story in detail. I liked the book, but found it less compelling than the first. It is a highly sexualized tale, and it almost got a little boring in it's repetitive telling. I found it interesting how the author inserted himself in the last part of the book. He really feels close to his characters!

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Jun 20, 2011

Liz rated it

Shelves: read-as-book-on-tape

It probably would have helped to know that this was a sequel (to "The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love") at the outset. Overall, though, it wasn't really compelling - way too much "beautiful Maria" this, "beautiful Maria" that - do I really need to hear a hundred times how great her body was? The pacing was quite slow, but the one thing I did enjoy was getting a window on Cuba, pre-revolution, and also on the ex-pat Cuban experience in the US.

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Nov 11, 2011

Amblingbooks.com marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Shelves: available-on-audio, fiction

"I fell instantly in love with the glorious soul of Beautiful Maria of My Soul. Hijuelos has created and brought to life two beloved characters, a heart-stealing heroine and Havana during an epoch of changing fate." - Amy Tan, bestselling author of The Joy Luck Club

Listen to Beautiful Maria of My Soul on your smartphone.

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Sep 16, 2011

Suzanne rated it

Once long ago I read "Mambo Kings sing songs of love." This is the story of the Maria about whom the Mambo Kings hit song was about. Very full of sex & longing & even (SPOILER!) a cameo appearance or two by the author, discussing the first book. I only remember the basic plot line from the Mambo Kings, but that didn't get in the way of the story. Interesting to see what the (male) author envisions going on in women's minds as they choose between men & think about sex.

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Dec 14, 2010

Sherry rated it

A few years ago I read 'the mambo kings play songs of love'. Good book, and I believe it also became a movie. In that book a love song is written titled 'beautiful maria of my soul'.

This is the story of Maria. Her life and loves and growing up in Cuba and her later life in Miami.

Wonderful!

And lots of twists and turns in the later chapters that are quite delightful.

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Jun 11, 2010

Julie Ellis rated it

I didn't find this book as compelling as its predecessor, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. Somehow, I never found Maria to be a likable character. The author also overemphasized her beauty, such that it made her seem a characiture. I did enjoy how he tied this book to the previous one. He also did a very postmodern bit in the last section, putting himself in the book. Definitely a comment on the boundary between fact and fiction.

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Dec 13, 2010

Sue rated it

Shelves: fiction

I loved Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love which came out 20 years ago. Beautiful Maria of my soul is told from beautiful Maria's point of view. It is essentially the same story at first book & then goes on with Maria separately. It's almost as good as Mambo Kings, but maybe it didn't stand the test of time as well. I did like the fact that the author inserts himself, very cleverly, into the ending as a character.

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Dec 29, 2011

Suzanne Perkins rated it

The book is a sequel to Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. I haven't read that. I found this one on closeout so I thought I would try it and read the first if I was lost. It does fine as a stand alone book. The story is sections. The entire last section when the family is in Miami should have been cut. It's not very interesting at all.

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Aug 24, 2011

Pam Johnson rated it

After starting this book, I realized I had read The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love many years ago, and the author cleverly weaves the two stories together. This book was somewhat uneven, though I enjoyed the picture it painted of pre-revolution Cuba. Once I realized Maria was described in hyperbole, I thought the book was much more fun.

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Jul 08, 2010

Janelle added it

I wasn't in love with this book. I read the first, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, 8 years ago, so it's hard to make a comparison there. Maria or what happens isn't terribly compelling, and the meta-ness towards the end feels schlocky instead of fun. It's a quick read, but I don't feel like I got very much out of it. The language was well crafted, but the narrator's voice is not my taste.

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Jul 13, 2010

Ajonespomatto rated it

Although I enjoyed this sequel to the Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, I found myself being bored my Beautiful Maria, the woman who inspired the Mambo Kings greatest hit. She is a one dimensional character, albeit intentionally so, and I found myself longing for more of the other characters who made Hijuelos' Cuba so interesting. His evocative writing made me constantly hungry for the spices and food of Cuba. I loved the humor and style of the book and the very fine writing. I just wanted mo...more

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Jun 12, 2010

Brenda rated it

The guy can tell a story, but the story lacked depth. Unrequited love, love for the sake of money, sex equals love are universal themes presented here with some passion. The only character I really loved was Maria's reading maestro. And even he was so bewitched by her beauty that he didn't criticize her.

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Jan 29, 2012

Denise Psoinos rated it

Almost finished. Love it and recommend it. I love the character Maria and her complexity and Hijuelos' honesty in writing. I love the honesty of the romance, the dirtyness of the sex scenes, the corruption, the sexism, everything and not trying to gloss it over. Also love the use of Spanish words throughout the dialogues that give you a more authentic look into the characters understanding them in thier native tongue.

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Jul 22, 2011

tamarack rated it

· review of another edition

an wonderful novel that playful aims to convince us it is not a novel, but a glorious history. the inclusion of actual historical figures and events adds to the enjoyment of the story. emotional, hyperbolic, and almost-epic, i recommend it even if (like myself) you haven't read the prequel.

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About Oscar Hijuelos

Oscar Hijuelos (born August 24, 1951) is an American novelist. He is the first Hispanic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Hijuelos was born in New York City, in Morningside Heights, Manhattan, to Cuban immigrant parents. He attended the Corpus Christi Schoo, public schools, and later attended Bronx Community College, Lehman College, and Manhattan Community College before matriculatin...more

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