Pig’s Foot takes us on a journey through the history of Cuba through the eyes of a man who is the last in line of his family.
Continuing my globe-trotting adventure through literature, I end up in Cuba. I’ve never been to Cuba before and don’t know much about it, so I appreciated the history lesson here (even though it’s not entirely accurate since the author admits at the beginning that he sacrificed historical accuracy for the sake of the story). The book is told in a long narration, and at times this does get exhaustive, but the narrator is charismatic and pops up occasionally to give his own thoughts, which are usually blunt and humorous.
The characters are vivid and so well-written that I found myself liking those that I was probably supposed to hate.
But, unfortunately, there comes a point in the book when I started to wonder where it was going, and it started to turn into a ramble rather than a story. I kept going to the end because it is well-written, but the ending left me feeling underwhelmed. The twist is something that has been used a thousand times before and comes out of nowhere. It feels slapped on and I’m not even sure what point it serves.
If you are interested in Cuba, or you like historical fiction, then this may be a book that you will like. From reading some other reviews it seems that it’s a book that people either love or hate. I fall somewhere in the middle, so I’m not going to say completely avoid this, but it does turn into a bit of a pointless ramble so be wary of that.
