Very good, ethereal account of Eire's time in Cuba before being sent to the US on his own at age 12 to escape Communist Cuba. Sad, funny, disturbing.

Ultimately, I think its mostly joyful, though. If you look at the photo of Carlos as a small boy, and as a 50-something Yale U. professor of History and Religion, the same tight-lipped smile and smiling eyes come through. The boy became the man, despite the worst, and some of these experiences do count as worst.

I am married to a pedro pan kid/man Ovidio Fernandez now 58, and have read many books on the pedro pan saga. This one is the most memorable and touching of them all. I lost my copy in the katrina flood and have violated my promise,not to replace lost books, by purchasing this one beloved book.

I forced myself to finish this book. I say that because I have no idea what all these people are talking about. I LOVE to read- honestly, i probably read 10 books a month. Finding good books that you can't put down is my hobby. Not to say this book isn't good, because it is, but the good parts are so intermixed with the author's worthless drivel thoughts about NOTHING that you can't focus on the good stuff. I found myself skimming through entire chapters and i NEVER do that!

It IS a moving memoir about the Cuban Revolution and I like that part, but aside from that, I did not enjoy it. After reading the book, I know a TINY bit more about the Cuban revolution and ALOT more about this guy's hatred of lizards and his fear of his grandmother's house.

Some people may like it, just like some people like Picasso. That is what I would equate it to- a newer style of writing where the author thinks that the average reader WANTS to know every single worthless thought that runs through his head- and some of that may be interesting. But after the book, you definitely wonder if someone would buy your own book if you wrote down everything you were thinking about and disguised it under an interesting time in history. Just like Picasso, you think "I could probably do this on my own if I wanted."

Skip it. Buy something you can't put down because this is definitely not one of those!

Eire is a master of practical prose and humourous metaphors. And this, his memoir of his once carefree days of childhood in Cuba before the Revolution, abounds in both. It was very enjoyable to read as the author vividly dipicted everyday life in Havana, from his quirky family life to his reckless escapades with his buddies. He really does make you feel, hear, see, smell, and taste what he did growing up. It's easy to be swiftly swept away by the author's personal and disarming style as he recounts the time he and his friends blew up one of those hateful lizards with a firecracker. Or the time his Catholic teacher warned him of immorality. Or how his elementary crush was horrifyingly brought out in public.
Despite these comical stories, Eire does carry a great deal of gravity, especially when referring to Castro in bitterness. His inside view of the horrors and bloodiness that accompanied the Revolution makes it painfully real to the reader. He creates an indignance against the ruthless dictator and sympathy towards the suffering Cubans. Thank you, Mr. Eire, for bringing these injustices with all their force to reality for us.
My only issue with this book is the careless and flippant way the author(a professor of religious studies at Yale) seems to treat God. He repeatedly uses Jesus' name and all the images in his childhood home as a subject of jest. And he tries (inadequately in my opinion) to explain faith with reason, something that simply cannot be done.
So go ahead and read or even buy this book, it will be well worth it and you'll enjoy it. Only keep your head on when you come to the religious parts.

30 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
Waiting for Snow in Havana-Well Worth the Wait, March 11, 2003
By Jane Borderud (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy (Hardcover)
At long last, a book that tells the truth about how the Cuban Revolution affected Children whose only crime was being born in Cuba in the 1950's! We meet Carlos and his family on January 1st 1959. Carlos is 8 years old and is world is going to change dramatically and forever. Batista has fled and Castro is marching down the main street in Havana atop a Sherman tank. Within three years, life will totally change for Carlos and his older brother Tony. Eventually they will join the more than 14,000 unaccompanied Cuban children leaving for the USA towards and unknown future. The adventures continue...and seen through the eyes of Carlos it takes on an almost magical quality. Wherever Carlos Eire takes us on this Magical Mystery tour there in never a dull moment...whether ducking whizzing bullets or picking flowers for his mother in the park with his friends, or playing in the backyard of a neighbor who has a live chimp as a pet-one is totally enthralled in this rich narrative. For anyone who enjoys seeing the world through the eyes of a child, sprinkled with the insightful and almost transcendent wisdom of someone who has experienced and survived a cataclysmic shift in personal and cultural identity, Waiting for Snow in Havana was well worth the wait!! Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
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This is a beautiful book. I read it about 3 years ago when it first came out and it still haunts me. While it was written by one of the children evacuated from Cuba, that's really not the story. It's a story of Cuba and the people that lived there prior to and during the revolution. Funny, yet sad, heart-warming yet shocking, foreign yet hitting all too close to home. It's story-telling without peer. A great read.

I left Cuba -with my parents- at the age of eight in 1963. Although my exile experience was much less trumatic than Dr. Eiré's, his depiction of life in that place at that time, seen through the eyes of a child, awakened so many emotions, dormant in my consciousness for so many years! What some reviewers have deplored as aimless ramblings brings me as close as I will ever come to a long conversation with a lost childhood friend, with all the complicity of shared experiences. The familiar sights, the smells, the terrors, real and surreal -I still am both terrified and eerily fascinated by lizards, specially the Cuban anolí, which changes colors to match its surroundings, the magic all around me in those days, Catholic school, birthday parties, fear for your life, shameful mischief... I laughed harder than I had in years and also cried too real tears!

I visited Cuba about four years ago, to witness the death of a family member who meant very much to me during my childhood. Despite the tragic circumstances and the terrible destruction of my little town, I unexpectedly felt an overwhelming peace and sense of "home" which I would not have imagined until then, having left so young. I don't recall having slept better in many years before or since. I discovered that there is a part of our being that does not travel. I left it in Placetas when I went away and there it was, intact, waiting for me. And there it stayed again.

I thank Dr. Eiré with all my heart for having brought me as close as it can be to that profusely bleeding chunk of who I am, which will never be in my present address.

Another Cuban boy.

This book was Great! I believe every person who struggled to get to the US to find freedom would enjoy this book. Eventhough I came much later in life, i believe his accounts really hit home with what i remember.

Wonderful delivery of characters throughout the book, but Eire's relentless weaving of timelines was distracting. It was almost incoherent or redundant at times, rambling from one period to another. I also had a little difficulty understanding the "wistful" invocation of philosophical and spiritual jargon throughout the book.

Despite the distractions, a good read for the first few hundred pages. Probably could have dropped a hundred easily.

During my career I have worked with and developed close friendships with several Cuban Americans, including two "Pedro Pans" - one of whom is currently a US Ambassador to an important European country. I could never quite imagine what life might have been like for them as boys in Cuba and how their lives were turned upside down. Their resilience has been an inspiration.

Eire's book, mentioned to me by a former high school English teacher, answers many of my questions far better than I could have hoped. It is a literary masterpiece that provides anthropological insights about the life of the privileged under Batista. Remarkably Eire does not whitewash this era - he makes it clear that the sons of Batista, of his chief torturer, and of upper class professionals enjoyed privileges unavailable to most. He admits to serial shop-lifting as a boy and the materialism that made birthday parties stressful events. But it came to a sudden end when Castro took power and banned Christmas, persecuted his opponents, and caused families to send their children abroad.

Over the weekend I had a conversation with someone whose family fled Tehran after the ouster of the Shah. Somehow her stories were evocative of Eire describing Cuba under Batista.

Nothing I can say can do this book -- and Dr. Eire -- justice. I read this book on a (Cuban-American) friend's recommendation. I knew very little about Cuba or Castro. I have never been so moved by a book in my life. This is a must-read for everyone on the planet.

Carlos Eire's account is heartwarming, entertaining and feels as genuine as anything I have ever read in the genre.

As a Cuban American who was fortunate to have been born in the US, I have heard many first person accounts of similar experiences. This book helps people like me, that live the Cuban experience in S. Florida everyday, learn a little bit more of what might have been.

The book is sometimes painful in it's honesty. The confusion and fear from leaving your country and your upbringing. The disfunction and feelings of betrayal from his father feels universal. Parents abandon their kids sometimes for reasons that make no sense.

This book feels much like the "KiteRunner" felt. Both extremely moving portrayals of the immigrant experience.

I heard about this book on a morning talk radio show and thought the author sounded very sincere and his story very interesting. It is an interesting story and I'm sure the author tells it how he lived it but unfortunately I found it to be just OK. Normally I can fly thru a book...Kite Runner for example, however this is definitely not on the same scale.

I had been searching for a good read for a while and just happened to stumble upon this book in the store. It is excellent and fresh!

I was reluctant about reading "Waiting for Snow in Havana" because I didn't want to read about Castro and how horrible it is in Cuba. But since a friend lent me the book I thought what the heck, I would read it. What a treat it turned out to be for me.

Carlos Eire writes about his childhood in the late 1950s and early 1960's in Havana, Cuba until he is exiled to the United States. He could have written a bitter and angry story, but instead he writes a poignant, hilarious and at times a sad memoir. Not often do I find my self laughing out loud while reading and I did with this book. I don't recall the real names of his parents, but came to understand the names he gave them of Louis VI and Marie Antoinette.

What amazed me is that in many ways that this upper middle class society in Spanish Cuba in the late 1950's and early 1960's wasn't that different from it was here in the USA; especially the experience of Catholic schooling. Certainly in summertime we would blow up apples with fire-crackers, they would blow up lizards.

It wasn't an idealized world that was instantly shattered when Castro comes down from the mountains. Instead he shows how insidious the change of government was from Bautista to Castro. At first they tried to adapt as well as they could and he conveys how it was by the loudspeakers in the street with Castro speaking every day and on the radio all time. Certain street people would disappear as well as street vendors. No more Catholic schools and that was fun for him because got to a coed school. His mother, Marie Antoinette realized she needed to get her children out of Cuba and she them to United States by themselves. Louis VI would not leave Cuba, but Marie eventually reunited with her children in the US. Eire doesn't write with bitterness, but he does show the anger and hurt that he encountered from this time in his life.

I ended up purchasing this book because the book I was reading got a little wet. It was my friend's husband's book and I didn't want for her to hear from her husband "but why did you loan out my book" and it comes back damaged. Also, I liked the book so much and I was telling my sister about this book and now I can lend my own copy (the slightly damaged one.). My friend is waiting for the Spanish version of this book, but I think she should just read this book now.

I'm a communist, a supporter of the Cuban revolution and I loved this book. Unlike a recent reviewer I do not condemn this book because I do not hold the perspective of its author. I loved this book both for its literary beauty and the subject matter that it presented. I agree with much of the literary praise in these posts and will not attempt to add more. I will briefly address the subject matter.

Another recent reviewer pointed to a future Spanish translation with the hope that it might get into many hands on the island. I too would like to see this widely read, and discussed, in Cuba.

I'm not going to go into too much detail since a review on amazon must necessarily be brief.

The main point I would like to make is that the book does present a real perspective in vivid color. To begin to see this book objectively one might imagine reading a similar account of before and after the American Revolution from the perspective of a someone growing up in a Tory family in the Colonies, after having fled to Canada, ranting about John Adams and other troublemakers, who just couldn't leave well enough alone.

This being read in Cuba would illustrate the point. The book really does paint a damning picture of a minority of the population, the class of the elite, where the author's perspective was formed. The author himself paints a picture, and I think understands, why they were ultimately scorned and hated.

One incident is where the author, as a child, was traumatized by the prospect of turning black by virtue of eating certain foods. There is no indication it was the skin color per se, but the social status of a black, which was feared so deeply. And this at a very young age. One might tempted to commend the author for this except it was the revolution that he condemned that actually outlawed discrimination while we still had Jim Crow in the U.S.

It is ironic that his valued whiteness was reduced to being a `spic' upon entering the `democratic' U.S. after leaving revolutionary Cuba. There is no suggestion that the revolution would label him a `spic'.

The majority of Cubans living in Cuba, whether or not a communist, or even political, would see this from the perspective of their revolution. They would scorn any that held up that milieu of the author, while still in Cuba, as any positive example of who should lead society. It should be too difficult for most of us here to come to the same conclusion.

If this book is read objectively it will show a bit of the reason why the revolution was needed. Read the book, maybe it will interest you more about the real history of the Cuban revolution and the U.S. opposition to it.

I enjoyed the way this book was written straight from the thoughts of a kid and not merely as another political statement. The good, the bad, the bitter, the joyous, the sad...it was real to me.

As a Cuban American who left the island in 1961 by myself at age 15 (wondering if I would see my parents ever again, which I did), I truly related to Carlos's story and deeply enjoyed his narratives. I laughed and I cried my way through this book like no other one I have ever read; could not put it down. It really touched my heart and I highly recommend it to anyone who is interested in a real life account of Cuba in the 50s and 60s written from the perspective of a vulnerable young man having to endure a traumatic separation. Personally, I am very fortunate to have left the island and to live in America. Cuba today is a place where human rights are routinely ignored and freedom of expression is non-existent. Great book!!!

I loved every word on every page of this book. Why can't I give the book 8 stars, or 10, or even 100? I laughed and cried my way through the whole thing.


Of course, in order to fully appreciate this book, one must have a good sense of humor. Like one Cuban friend of mine told me, "When I was young, I was very serious. Then the revolution came. After that, I developed a sense of humor."

I see that the Spanish translation is coming out this year. That makes me happy. Maybe someday soon it can be reprinted in Cuba. Of course, at this point in time, one can be arrested for merely transporting paper, let alone printing such subversive materials as childhood memories of the revolution.

No es facil.

I was born in PR because of the Cuban Revolution. My parents left Cuba in 1960 before Carlos Erie left Cuba, nevertheless, Mr. Erie's book and account of the situation is spot on as my parents validated the story. A story many people around the world are reluctant to understand or accept. In the end, I'm glad there are authors like Mr. Erie, even though, he decided to drop his Spanish last name. As I was reading his book, I wondered what would my father had thought if I had changed my last name to my mother's maiden name, as my uncle (mom's brother), the last name-barer of my Mom's side of the family, never had a son to perpetuate our last name. I know my dad would have been offended. At any rate, the book is outstanding, funny and informative. Recommended reading to all CNN/MSNBC enthusiasts.