A dark mosaic of interwoven narratives ...Despite being a quick and darkly comical read, The Black Cathedral addresses a vast thematic spectrum, highlighting the intersectional nature of mid-twentieth century Cuban society ... a transcendent tale of what it is to be human in a place not made to nurture. Exploring this idea of humanity in all its twisted, generous, deviant, beautiful forms, Gala’s novel is a twisted ode to a town teeming with magic and limitless potential, and replete with people in chase of unlikely dreams. Written with an astute colloquialism that captures a true and impressive diversity of voice, The Black Cathedral transports the reader to the marginal town of Cienfuegos, making no efforts to shield us from the dangers—and subtle joys—at the heart of its stories.
Even as the novel charts the voyages of its vagabonds, it represents an attempt to draw the periphery into the center, steering us toward the provinces as it renovates the Cuban novel ... This chaotic, democratic bricolage — each voice vulgar and vulnerable in its own way — styles the novel as a series of interviews. Taken together, they represent a cubist inquest into the soul of Cienfuegos ... The novel’s form isn’t its only radical quality.
...deeply immersed in Cuban culture and history ... Every fictional device imaginable is employed. The aberrations chronicled in detail include but are not limited to murder, cannibalism, and sexual intercourse with a corpse. Ghosts talk to and guide characters in the pursuit of treasure. Characters move casually from one sexual partner to another. Oral sex is commonplace ... As a result, I can recommend The Black Cathedral to those willing to face a society mired in poverty and excess. Its readers need to be willing to piece together the story from incomplete clues. A knowledge of Spanish will help. This is not an easy read ... But to the degree that Marcial Gala has accurately depicted the culture of Punta Gotica, the effort required to struggle through the book is worthwhile. I came away from The Black Cathedral with a deepened understanding of Cuba and the extent to which poverty can undermine decency — a lesson well worth learning.
...Gala’s novel travels about in time and space a little in the way the ghost does, dispersing anecdotes, regrets, and fragile hopes, never exactly settling into an agreed story. Throughout, the supposedly minor characters are more lucidly drawn than the family at the novel’s heart ... The Black Cathedralis finally not about larger ideas of redemption and the future at all, but about predictable paths of minor failure and major self-justification. It’s no accident that key events...happen during the early years of the Obama administration: there’s a pervasive sense of dashed hopes, business as usual, faith ignored or betrayed. That the disappointment in a black president is most persuasively expressed by a black murderer—this is just one of the novel’s more devious turns. Surprisingly, the only thing Gala’s characters seem to have unalloyed trust in is writing itself. Or rather, poetry in particular. There is hardly a voice here that doesn’t at some point tell how literature became a guiding principle or practice, a consolation or a route out of Cienfuegos and its religiosity, its violence, its hatred of women. Rimbaud, Villon, Ulrich von Hutten: the names circulate like so many romantic promises of escape in the face of Arturo Stuart’s mad authority.
Gala’s characters are always impressive creations—he gets inside their heads and bodies and libidos—but Gringo is exceptionally magnetic ... Refracting off Gringo’s larger-than-life story are quieter voices, alluring in their different ways ... The social reality depicted in this book is considerably harsher than the versions of Cuba in Gala’s other novels ... The language of Black Cathedral is also more colloquial than in Gala’s other books—in keeping with its oral history form—with only the slightest Caribbean lilt, providing sly, rhythmic embellishments ... Apart from occasional instances that stiffen the prose...the translation by Anna Kushner is flowingly faithful to the original ... The Black Cathedral is a book about survival—every character is in danger of imminent harm—but there’s a melancholy playfulness that enlivens the tragedy.
Kushner’s nimble translation flows with flavor and intensity while telling a dark present-day story ... Gala’s raw, compelling, and highly readable novel lays bare a Cuba that, just like everywhere else, has not found an answer to human desperation, envy, or evil. For most literary fiction collections, especially those serving readers interested in contemporary Latin American fiction.
The Black Cathedral winds up being an odd mix of character-/neighborhood-/nation-studies and suspense story, Gala dangling the mystery surrounding the collapse of both the Stuart family and the grand cathedral project but drawing that out over a very long time ... Despite being a fairly compact novel, it is, however, a(n overly) diffuse picture, with so many characters and stories—many intertwined, but also straying (especially in the case of the dominant Gringo) far afield. One other interesting aspect of the novel is the racial one, as the Stuart family (and many of the other characters) are black and this features, on some level, in much that happens (including when and in how Gringo adapts to the United States). Gala weaves this into his novel well—but he's weaving a lot into this novel, and elsewhere seems to promise too much (with the cathedral-project, for example), the ultimate delivery of some of this rather weakened. The Stuart family members' often limited presence in so much of the novel is a problematic void—and in its resolution, where they (or some of them) are more at the fore, the fact that we have learned so little about them to that point undermines that as well. An interesting and colorful if ultimately too loose (with its so many threads ...) read.
... strange, exuberant, and altogether brilliant ... An enthralling work of imagination and grit, Gala’s novel captures the complexity of one neighborhood as much as it exemplifies the many pleasures of great fiction.
