Hailed as perhaps the first great Cuba novel, Cecilia Valdés was first published in full 1882, when Cirilo Villaverde (then living in exile in New York City) returned to a story he had begun some forty years prior.
There is much to recommend here, most notably insight into the rich and complex interactions of race and class in late 19th century Cuba, where skin color is insufficient to identify someone as “white” (that is, Spanish), “black” (a slave or a newly freed peasant), or “mulatto” (everyone else). This alone makes it an interesting read, especially if you pay close attention to whose voices are believed and whose are ignored throughout the work.
It is also, and explicitly, a novel of its time: while the complexity of the social mileau is well-drawn, the comparative worth of its denizens is thickly racist and uncontested, by either the characters or the narrator’s voice.
There are significant holes in the plot–the largest being a case of mistaken lineage that is only unseen by key characters by their being completely blind to the obvious. But this is not terribly unusual in novels of the time, and if you enjoy those, you would probably enjoy Cecilia Valdés, especially if the history of the Caribbean, and Cuba in particular, holds interest.
#What I Wish I Could Do
Return to a novel started many years earlier, complete it, and see it receive decent acclaim despite its obvious flaws.