The language is beautiful. The entire book verges on the poetic as it tells the story, filled with loss and heartbreak, of three generations of a Cuban family. The way the author switches points of view is actually quite effortless; I found it helped to see certain events through different eyes. The story also touches often on political events and examples of the stresses they placed on the bonds between family members of the time. It's not a bad take on the distant, and sometimes altogether disconnected lives, of Cubans and Cuban-Americans.