This is the second book recommended by a friend of mine, and I have the impression that we have great conversations, but I can’t really rely on her book recommendations because we clearly have different tastes in literature. This book is better than the first one she recommended, which I couldn’t get through due to its writing style. Here, the style is fine, and I had no trouble understanding what the author meant in the different passages. I don’t understand why the articles were added in a chosen order instead of chronologically, which left me unable to fully understand the author’s background and story. The structure made it so that I didn’t know what I would read next, and I felt lost. I also feel that, after reading yet another book about Cuba, I’m seeing a country where people are so lost and unwilling to live that they accept whatever happens around them. Throughout the book, it was clear that the author knew things shouldn’t be this way, but she stays because she wants to be with the people she loves. I get the sense that people in this country have given up, don’t want to leave because they feel pride in staying and waiting for the government’s promises to be fulfilled. I don’t have that kind of energy, I don’t understand this place, and I’ve completely stopped dreaming of going there, because I don’t want to, as a tourist, contribute money to the destruction of the lives of the local people. After reading this book, I also realized how many people in our country are similarly deceiving themselves, just on a different scale. My friend who recommended this book to me also went to Cuba, and when I asked her why, even after reading this book, she still went, she said she went because her friends convinced her to. So maybe that’s what it’s all about – so few of us live in harmony with ourselves. The Cubans are proud of enduring, while she’s proud because she made her friends happy by going with them to a country that may be interesting for tourists but is a hell on Earth for the locals.