Cuban Quartermoon by Ann Putnam (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Cuban Quartermoon by Ann Putnam Sarah Driscoll Ann Putnam, Cuban Quartermoon. Seattle: Skylight Press, 2022. 341 pp. Paper, $16; e-book, $8.99. Ann Putnam’s Cuban Quartermoon chronicles central protagonist Laura Gallagher’s trip to Havana, Cuba, for an Ernest Hemingway conference, traversing both time and place as she navigates traumatic memories from her past. Replete with a ragtag cast of Hemingway scholars and aficionados from both the United States and Cuba, Putnam’s novel highlights Cuba as an integral setting—and Hemingway as a critical author—for Laura’s psychological and cultural awakenings. The novel also cements the relationship between the American West and the Caribbean, with consistent flashbacks to life in Seattle and St. Louis, where Laura painfully processes, in Havana time, the loss of her mother, daughter, and marriage. Perhaps just as important is the novel’s delineation and reminiscence of signature Hemingway sites in Cuba: Hemingway’s Cuban home, Finca Vigía; Cojímar, the small fishing town that became the setting for Hemingway’s classic, The Old Man and the Sea; and the famed hotel Ambos Mundos, where Hemingway wrote some of his best works, such as For Whom the Bell Tolls, in the 1930s. While the novel’s central plot is defined by Laura’s traumatic memories of her mother’s mental illness, her daughter’s death, and the end of a marriage, the novel positions Hemingway as emblem-atic of the intersections between and among the Pacific Northwest, the Midwest, and the Caribbean. Hemingway’s memory also serves, as late as the 1990s, as a bridge builder; his works and life in Cuba pave the way for protagonist Laura’s ability to process her pain, reconcile her demons, and find comfort and healing in the presence of his memory. Moreover, the novel explores how Americans from the West see Cuba. The narrative positions Cuba as a site of the uncanny, a Caribbean trope the novel foregrounds when Laura feels threatened by the Bodeguita man when she explores Santería practices and when she travels through a Conrad-esque “cave of the mind” in Pinar del Río. At no point does the reader sense that Americans in Cuba are truly safe, and this quasi–Heart of Darkness motif, while perhaps accurate, is one of the novel’s more troubling representations. So, while the novel endearingly portrays mother-daughter relationships and Cuban women as nurturers, survivors, [End Page 179] scholars, and writers, Cuba is defined by a heavy dose of romantic and lusty desire (solidified by Laura’s affair with psychiatrist Michael), conflated with enigmatic and threatening contexts that tend to reinforce some of the myths about Cuba that surface in American narratives from the perspective of Westerners. While the novel focuses heavily on the relationship between the American West and Cuba, its value rests, too, in its exploration of US scholars in Cuba, the relationships those scholars have not only with each other but with Cuban scholars, who are equally invested in Hemingway studies. Indeed, multiple Cubans act as translators during the Hemingway conference, of culture and of language. Amidst daily threats of poverty and political dissidence, Cuban scholars, translators, and guides navigate the Cuban landscape and are critical to Laura’s many psychological and sexual awakenings. Nonetheless, one of the novel’s strengths is its understanding of the tenor and academic hierarchies of Hemingway studies on the island: Cuban scholars and talented writers are consistently sidelined due to political entanglements and face significant financial and familial adversity and, at one point, death. As a result, the novel is just as much about the imbalance of power between American and Cuban scholars in Hemingway studies due to Cuba’s political climate as it is about Laura’s reconciliation with the traumas of her past. In all, Cuban Quartermoon is both a novel of trauma and healing, as well as a fascinating look at the relationship between western American scholars and Cuba through the conduit of Hemingway studies. While Laura finds peace with her new love Michael at the end and reconciles past traumas, what remains unclear to readers is whether Hemingway’s memory is sufficient to stand the test of...