Cuba Libre by Anne Fleischman
The book's very brief description on the Renaud-Bray website had rather forced a laugh in my mouth:
Funny vacation!!! Funny from start to finish!
Also, Anne is my friend: I did one of my first lucrative contracts with her, and I lived in her beautiful house for two weeks before moving into my first real apartment. A dear friend is wonderful in terms of relationships, but it's trickier when it comes to giving feedback on her very first novel. Normally.
Today, I am sincerely pleased to tell you that my anxiety about discovering that my friend had no literary talent quickly evaporated. Renaud-Bray's description was sketchy, but completely accurate.
Summary
Due to a silly organizational error, Jean-Louis is forced to spend a week in October instead of March with his son-in-law and daughter, without his wife, in an all-inclusive. He discovers, grumbling, that October is the rainy season in Cuba, which is why his tickets were so cheap. It was only in the cab to the airport that he realized he should have brought an umbrella.
Further on the plane, Sigmund, 16 years old, endures with more or less patience his new age parents dripping with optimism, convinced that this little trip recommended by their therapist will make their son's adolescent crisis disappear.
And higher up, in the sky, the God Iztamna welcomes a trainee who wants to change the weather around the Costa Sol y Mar to study the "influence of geo-climatic factors on close clan relationships in Homo sapiens ».
The vacations of our protagonists are going to be much more than rainy...
Review
I have to say, I felt pressure to find it funny. Usually, that doesn't help me laugh. However, I was able to laugh out loud as early as chapter 2, when the wacky god from the prologue reappears... with an intern. To my delight, these two gods will reappear very regularly to disrupt the ecosystem of vacationers in a purely scientific spirit. Frankly, I didn't expect it.
The second family we meet after Jean-Louis' family gives me a second pleasant surprise. Sigmund and his Teletubbies parents are both zany and realistic. I have vivid memories of my teenage years, and how old and boring adults seemed to me. With parents like Sigmund's, that's the last straw. Sigmund is actually very patient and relatively polite.
The pleasant surprises followed one another until the end. The plot is simple but well crafted, the humor is well placed, the descriptions are accurate, the characters are believable and coherent, the ending was even touching. Anne Fleischman masters her language. This was to be expected since she is a professional writer, and this book confirmed that.
Another amusing little detail, although I'm not sure it was intentional: the Quebec characters are quite franchouillards. It's rare for a Montrealer to say words like "vachement", "m'sieur" or "petite amie", unless they grew up in France. Sigmund, for example, once said "fucking weird" and "balader" in the same line. It's a bit weird… 😉
If you're looking for a read that won't make you rack your brains without turning your brain to mush either, to put a smile on your face, and to relax on the beach or in bed, this book is a good choice. Bravo Anne!
Anne Fleischmann
128 pages
