Book Reviews
Everyone Leaves
Nieve Guerra finds herself caught between the tides of her parents’ rocky relationship and a country in the midst of a revolution. Recording her daily thoughts and accounts of living with her abusive father, an alcoholic theater actor, Nieve uses her diary to express herself.
Everyone Leaves
265 pp. AmazonCrossing
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From being sent away from her mother, her mother’s free-spirited and loving boyfriend, and her childhood city of Cienfuegos to being forced to call herself a Cuban “revolutionary Pioneer,” Nieve records in honest detail a life in which she loses those she loves the most—and can do nothing about it.
Written in the form of a diary that tells Nieve Guerra’s story from age eight to twenty, this novel tells the life of a young girl with an alcoholic father that blames her for his wife running away with another man and, even worse, a foreigner. This unique experience, written with strength and authenticity, reflects the Cuban reality without ideological castigation.
Through her diary entries, Nieve reveals the intimate details of a turbulent family life while painting an authentic portrait of the social and political unrest in Cuba under the rule of Castro.
