Review: The Passion According to Carmela

The Passion According to Carmela by Marcos Aguinis
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This was one of the ebooks I received for free from Amazon's World Book Day 2019. There seem to be a lot of books this year with authors and settings from different countries, with an Argentinian author and an almost entirely Cuban setting. I like that World Book Day introduces me to books I would otherwise never find on my own.

I feel like this book has a pretty slow start. I found the first two-thirds a little dull, but the last few chapters are exciting. I mostly found the characters flat and uninteresting. It was very interesting to see Gabriel García Márquez appear as a character, though!

It seems from the Author's Note and the title that the romance between Carmela and Ignacio is supposed to be the center of this book, but I didn't find it to be compelling. I didn't really believe in their love despite the switches to first person that should have been more convincing.

I had just recently listened to a snippet of a podcast that my husband was listening to where they analyzed the successes of revolutions. One of the "ingredients" for success was nonviolence, which of course directly contradicts a quote from this book: "Revolution without violence is no revolution at all." I am glad I now know a little more about the Cuban revolution than the zero knowledge I had before.

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