cover image The Island of Cundeamor

The Island of Cundeamor

Rene Vazquez Diaz, Rene Vazquez Diaz. Latin American Literary Review Press, $16 (231pp) ISBN 978-1-891270-04-8

Exiles from Cuba, Finland, Miami and life itself populate the Crabb Company Investigation compound on the imaginary island of Cundeamor--the Cuban-American illusion of the perfect Cuba--located somewhere in the ether over Miami. Here, in isolation, the denizens populating D az's ambitious, allegorical novel obsess about their homelands, sex, wealth, and political and romantic fidelity. Among the inhabitants are Nicotiano, a lonely, self-absorbed artist whose sculptures of crabs lend the company its name; an impoverished woman aptly named Betty Boop, who seeks a life mate after her husband's disappearance; a wise and vicious dog named Kafka; and narrator Aunt Ulalume, the manager of the Crabb Company compound, who wears a bathrobe with an erotic, life-sized Santa Barbara painted on its back. The cast list is completed by Ulalume's Finnish husband and his band of armed, military-trained guards. Each character is obsessed by thoughts of death, loneliness, homelessness or success, but their disparate tales are never fleshed out properly. The most entertaining character, Betty Boop, is the best developed, but her story's ending is too pat. Nicotiano, also a promising character, is relegated to delivering history lessons; he voices one of the work's most important themes--""home is where the self is."" D az's writing is lucid and infused with parody and sarcasm, but his novel fails as narrative, concerning itself to excess with concept. (July)