Here's Cuba:
And here's the book description:
One Hundred Bottles, with its intersecting characters and unresolved whodunits, can be read as a murder mystery. But it's really a survivor's story. In a voice that blends gossip, storytelling, and literature, Z—the vivacious heroine of Portela's award-winning novel—relates her rum-soaked encounters with the lesbian underground, the characters carving up her home, and the terrifying-but-irresistible Moisés. As entertaining as any detective drama, One Hundred Bottles is ultimately made real by very rough love, intense friendship, and something small that decides to live.
Yeah, umm...this cannot be read as a murder mystery. First off, the death doesn't happen till the end of the book, and there's a question of whether it's an accident or murder. That question doesn't get answered.
The terror of Moises is that he's incredibly abusive and sadistic. And Z basically just lets everyone walk all over her and treat her like shit. I have a hard time enjoying a character like that, which is probably very insensitive of me.
The story overall was fine. I wasn't super excited to get back into it, but it wasn't really boring either. I've noticed a similar style of writing in many Central and Southern American authors in that they seem to put a lot of description into everyday or mundane things. Like most of the book is just her everyday life. I guess I could glean a lot of information about the country this way...maybe I should appreciate it more. But I guess you have to wonder how much of it is just made up or not the life of the average person there. But maybe that doesn't matter. Okay, okay, I'm kind of going in circles here.
There was one really poignant line about Z's pregnancy that was put in the book a couple of times, and I loved it so much so it's what I'll end with: "Something small has decided to live."
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