Book Reviews
The novel’s real draws are its complex relationships and well-researched cultural context, not the big telex-worthy events.... Kushner’s sharp observations about human nature and colonialist bias provide a deep understanding of the revolution’s causes.... Kushner herself evinces an intimate knowledge of her novel’s world and characters. Her style is sure and sharp, studded with illuminating images.... These potent moments...make the novel a dreamy, sweet-tart meditation on a vanished way of life and a failed attempt to make the world over in America’s image. Out of tropical rot, Kushner has fashioned a story that will linger like a whiff of decadent Colony perfume.
Susan Cokal - New York Times Book Review
Wonderful reviews have been coming thick and fast for Telex from Cuba, and they're more than well deserved. This first novel by Rachel Kushner is a pure treat from the cover to the very last page. It's the kind of thing you should stock up on to give sick friends as presents; they'll forget their arthritis and pneumonia, I promise, once they walk into a land that's gone now, but not yet quite forgotten: Cuba in the last few years before Fidel Castro took over…A world we'll never see again, any part of it. Rachel Kushner uses her considerable powers to bring it back for us, one last time.
Carolyn See - Washington Post
Kushner's colorful, character-driven debut succinctly captures the essence of life for a gilded circle of American expats in pre-Castro Cuba, chronicling a mélange of philandering spouses, privileged carousers and their rebellious children. K.C. Stites and Everly Lederer are raised among the American industrial strongholds of the United Fruit Company sugar plantation and the Nicaro nickel mines. As adolescents, they are confronted by the complexities of local warfare and backstabbing politics, while their parents remain ignorant of the impending revolution. Meanwhile, in Havana, burlesque dancer Rachel K and her former SS officer companion become entangled in Castro's revolution. Toward the end of 1957, K.C.'s brother, Del, joins the rebels, and within a month the United Fruit Company's cane fields are ablaze. Throughout the following year, the attacks on U.S.-operated businesses intensify; political and personal loyalties are shuffled and betrayed; and the violence between the rebels and Batista's forces escalate. The action, while slowed at times by Kushner's tendency to revisit plot points from multiple points of view, culminates in a riveting drama. Given the recent Cuba headlines, Kushner's tale, passionately told and intensively researched, couldn't have come at a more opportune time.
Publishers Weekly
Wonderful reviews have been coming thick and fast for Telex from Cuba, and they’re more than well deserved,” notes the Washington Post. Drawing.... While reviewers praise the cinematic period details, history lesson, and political intrigue, some disagree about the many third-person perspectives (philandering Americans, alcoholic wives, a burlesque dancer and mistress to Cuban politicians) that crowd the narrative. But overall, Kushner’s magnificent debut re-creates a lost world and era.
Bookmarks Magazine
Kushner bathes her story in period details that draw listeners into a lost world of Pullman cars, private servants, and expatriate parties. James possesses a jaded tone that is perfect for characters insulated by colonial society. His reading purposely lacks sentimentality and thereby reflects the detachment of people whose privilege renders them blind to a revolution. —Jerry Eberle
Booklist
Los Angeles resident Kushner's first novel follows the lives of American ex-pats and others in pre-revolutionary Cuba. In 1950s Cuba, employees of the vast, powerful United Fruit Company enjoy luxuries galore in their exclusive island communities while poverty and unrest stirs around them. Growing up on United Fruit property, Everly Lederer and K.C. Stites alternately share the stories of their strange, privileged lives. Through the children's eyes, the social morays, recklessness and fears of the adults are revealed. While the children relay their upbringing in the Oriente Province, an exotic dancer, Rachel K, casts a spell on politicians and rebels alike in a nightclub in Havana. The mysterious Rachel K and one of her patrons, a French traitor, become deeply involved in the growing revolution, which leads them down an accelerating path toward a new and different future. Castro's coup serves as a riveting backdrop and famous figures, like Fidel and his brother Raul, populate the narrative. When the revolution reaches the gates of the American community, Everly and K.C. glimpse the world outside their secluded utopia, even as their socialite parents hold fast to their ignorance. The danger and violence of revolution engross Rachel K and the Frenchman, both of whom lack for a homeland, and they seem to thrive off the conflict. For the Americans, this harsh new backlash eventually shatters their previously tranquil lives, and the home they never truly possessed is seized in a flurry of patrimony. Soundly researched and gorgeously written, the creative story also serves as a history lesson. An imaginative work that brings Cuban-American history to life.
Kirkus Reviews