This book is beautifully written. I love Hijuelos' style. He has a gift for painting an image of another era and imbuing it with all the sounds, smells and sensations that go along with it. His characters are heartbreakingly real flawed human beings. I loved the musicality of his prose. And the melancholic memories of an old man and former musician who once enjoyed semi- fame and admiration. The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love is about many things: family, love, lust, Cuban culture, the life of musicians, food, women, dance, mourning, life choices, and mortality. It follows the life trajectory of the Castillo brothers, Cesar and Nestor who put together a band, The Mambo Kings, and who eventually rise to a level of fame through Nestor's song, Beautiful Maria of My Soul. If I have any criticism, it is that the sexual descriptions get to be excessive. Admittedly, the reader feels Cesar Castillo's decline in old age and his confrontation with the realization of his own mortality, all the more. Upon completing the book though, I realized why it won a Pulitzer. The way Hijuelos weaves his tale in and out of beautiful and sad memories of the past and the present, and the way he makes you care about the Castillo's is really...something. I lack the proper term.

After a while, all the reminiscing about sexual escapades got old. I don't think it was out of character for an old, macho guy to spend a lot of energy thinking about the times he went down on a woman and what kind of food it smelled like, but if that doesn't interest you as a topic then I recommend finding something else to read.

I give it a 2 instead of a 1 because of the style of writing. I really liked all of the descriptions of life in Cuba and New York, the music, food, everything. He does a great job of recreating the atmosphere. My umbrage with the book is that, despite the compelling stories of many of the characters, it's hard to empathize with them. The repetitiveness compounded the problem.

The mambo king is as smooth as the music he and his melancholic brother Nestor play. Picking up women, jobs, and friends everywhere he goes, Cesar becomes famous through the mambo scene. The book does a wonderful job of relating his successes, his regrets, his ghosts, and eventually the old Cesar that time and grief has worn down. Oscar Hijuelos created very vibrant characters- so real you could smell the plantains frying in the kitchen as they talked about life. Wonderfully alive descriptions keep you right in the moment and keep you turning pages.

This book was ... lengthy, and it took me awhile to finish it but on the overall, it was good.

An exploration of music and the lifestyle of a scene.

Vivid world of sex and music. Had never read a book that so graphically described sex from the male point of view... Haunting story of both brothers, exiles from Cuba, trying to find meaning in life through music.

I did like this award-winning book, but I didn't love it. It's about two brothers who immigrate from Cuba to the U.S. to become music stars. It's not heavy on plot or suspense, and the brother whose life is covered in more detail is actually kind of a pig to women, but the author does some kind of word magic that makes you want to keep reading anyway.

I liked the movie better.