With this title you might well think we’re talking holiday romance in San Andrés or Santa Marta. Not so. This is a book about the last throes of a 19 year marriage, and though I’m not drawn to novels forefronting crises in personal relationships, this plausible story held my attention: the characters, Lucía and Pablo, are Colombians who’ve lived in the US since student days and I was interested in the extent to which the deterioration of their relationship is shaped by that immigrant experience.
The novel starts off with Lucía flying into Sunny Isles, Miami, with their two 6 year old twins, Tomás and Rosa, to holiday in her parents’ apartment. Her husband, Pablo, has stayed behind at home in New Haven, and shortly after they arrive in Miami, he has a heart attack and is taken to hospital, where he’s diagnosed with holiday heart—a disease that affects the cardiovascular system and is caused by excessive consumption of alcohol, red meat, salt, saturated fat… certain drugs and, in Pablo’s case excessive and risky sexual activity. Lucía flies back home and is told of the diagnosis by their family doctor. She’s confused and taken aback, takes a little time in the hospital cafeteria to gather herself before eventually going in to see him. Their meeting doesn’t feature.
The narrative continues with Lucía back in Miami with the children, relieved to hand a large part of the childcare to maid Cindy. There’s little mention of Pablo’s health, or indeed of Lucía’s reaction to the news of his indiscretions. The narrative point of view shifts between Lucía and Pablo, as well as darting around in time, gradually giving us a picture of these two people as individuals and a married couple. We learn that Lucía came to the US to study at Yale. Since then she’s been writing for women’s magazines, specifically Elle, often in derogatory voice about husbands, to Pablo’s dismay. Intensely conscious of her position in the intellectual pecking order as a Latino woman, she turns her sharp criticism on every other group she comes across—Latinos watching football in a bar, old people, Pablo’s sisters, her own parents. She’s devastatingly condescending towards Pablo, disparaging about the novel he’s been writing and his limited mentality and seems to get nastier as the novel progresses.
Pablo is also not a great guy. He’s fed up with his teaching job and at the beginning of the novel has received a letter of complaint signed by students about his slovenliness and general lack of professionalism. In flashbacks we learn more about him feeling undermined by Lucía, especially since the birth of the children, and his attachment to his family back in Colombia. There’s partying, alcohol, drugs and affairs, notably with his next door neighbour Elisa, which is tawdry indeed, as he neither likes her nor finds her attractive. Then there’s that underage girl, a student of his, who was with him when his holiday heart struck and who took him to hospital. The extent of their relationship is left ambiguous but he’s definitely stepped over the line.
So with these two unsympathetic main characters what kept me reading? Firstly, there were some minor characters who were vividly drawn and whose stories I enjoyed. There’s Cindy, the boisterous and in-your-face maid of Cuban origin, adored by 6 year old Rosa with her repertoire of board games and dance routines, appreciated by Lucía, if also a source of irritation. There’s Pablo’s Aunt Lety, the pride of her family when she emigrated to the States, now reduced to the humdrum but exhausting business of running her own launderette. There’s Pablo’s sister Sara-K, a frustrated teacher back in Colombia, desperate for some intellectual recognition, derided by Lucía when she talks language theory as a typical lower-middle-class girl desperate to appear educated. The novel is also carefully structured so we’re just fed the deterioration of the relationship in dribs and drabs: Lucía’s icy condescension is only released gradually, drop by drop, the extent of Pablo’s empty and exploitative sexual activities only becomes apparent later on. And yes, there is an awareness that these characters as a minority community in the States have to work harder to get somewhere. I’ve mentioned Lucía’s anxiety to fit in with the prevailing ideas of her female Yale contemporaries. There’s also a poignant moment when Pablo recalls first arriving in New Haven, feeling strange and different, the people around him are pink-coloured. I don’t feel the novel is shouting overly that their position as Latinos in the US led to the breakdown of their marriage, but it’s certainly one of the stresses in their lives.
peakreads 
I liked this book, and read and reviewed it about a year ago. I found it very funny in places!