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Library | Material Type | Item Barcode | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Searching... York - Fort Mill Branch | Book | 33205012944290 | FIC PADURA | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... York - Rock Hill Branch | Book | 33205012944357 | FIC PADURA | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
From Leonardo Padura--whose crime novels featuring Detective Mario Conde form the basis of Netflix's Four Seasons in Havana -- The Transparency of Time sees the Cuban investigator pursuing a mystery spanning centuries of occult history.
Mario Conde is facing down his sixtieth birthday. What does he have to show for his decades on the planet? A failing body, a slower mind, and a decrepit country, in which both the ideals and failures of the Cuban Revolution are being swept away in favor of a new and newly cosmopolitan worship of money.
Rescue comes in the form of a new case: an old Marxist turned flamboyant practitioner of Santería appears on the scene to engage Conde to track down a stolen statue of the Virgen de Regla--a black Madonna. This sets Conde on a quest that spans twenty-first century Havana as well as the distant past, as he delves as far back as the Crusades in an attempt to uncover the true provenance of the statue.
Through vignettes from the life of a Catalan peasant named Antoni Barral, who appears throughout history in different guises--as a shepherd during the Spanish Civil War, as vassal to a feudal lord--we trace the Madonna to present-day Cuba. With Barral serving as Conde's alter ego, unstuck in time, and Conde serving as the author's, we are treated to a panorama of history, and reminded of the impossibility of ever remaining on its sidelines, no matter how obscure we may think our places in the action.
Equal parts The Name of the Rose and The Maltese Falcon , The Transparency of Time cements Leonardo Padura's position as the preeminent literary crime writer of our time.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Dressed in the grungy trappings of a crime drama, this literary tour-de-force from Padura (Grab a Snake by the Tail) offers a colorful cultural history of Cuba and the island's historical contact with Europe that helped to shape its people's religious beliefs. Detective Mario Conde, an aging former cop, is hired by his old school friend, Bobby, to recover a statue of the Virgin of Regla, a Black madonna integral to Bobby's worship of Santeria. The statue was stolen by Bobby's lover, Raydel, but when Raydel and a confederate turn up murdered and high-end art dealers begin mingling with the suspects, Conde realizes Bobby's statue has more than just sentimental value. As Conde's adventures lead him into increasingly dangerous waters, an alternate narrative thread follows the statue's ownership back through time to the Crusades and the Knights Templar--a pedigree it shares with the eponymous statue of The Maltese Falcon, thus referencing the Bogart films adored by Conde. (In an inspired bar scene midway through, Conde, after receiving a lump on the back of the head while interviewing one of Raydel's associates, imagines he's Bogart while ordering a drink with the lift of a finger.) The author forges a wondrous connection between the past and present through his characters' faith in the statue's occult powers and through a vivid portrait of a decayed Havana, where vestiges of opulence glimmer in the ravages of time. Padura's novel will appeal equally to genre fans and lovers of literary thrillers. (June)
Kirkus Review
A socially revealing procedural by noted novelist Padura, the laureate of Havana. To say that Padura's detective hero, Mario Conde, is world-weary is to risk understatement. He's almost 60, tired, fully aware that the clock is ticking: "Among his three friends, he was the one sure to lift his glass the most times, fully aware that he sought the beneficial state of unconsciousness," writes Padura. "And whenever the recurring subject of frustrations, losses, and abandonments came up, he was the one who understood it as a matter of principles." Working more on his side hustle than on sleuthing, Conde haunts secondhand bookshops looking for treasures to sell. Meanwhile, Bobby Roque, an old high school friend, has been plying a better trade selling rare works of art--sometimes forgeries--to the American market. Bobby's boyfriend, however, has stepped on that lucrative business by pilfering his goodies, including a rare Black Madonna, supposedly the Virgin of Regla. Problem is, the statue doesn't quite match the canonical requirements of the icon, giving Padura a chance to explore the religious symbolism of Spanish Catholicism as it intersects with Santería, the African tradition in which Bobby has become an adept, shedding his former doctrinaire Marxism and his pretended straightness, put on "so that everyone in our macho-socialist homeland would believe that I was what I should have been and wouldn't take everything away from me." The story of the theft is a fairly straightforward matter, with the usual red herrings. What is of more interest to readers looking between the lines is Padura's unforgiving portrait of the Cuba of 2014, a couple of years before Fidel Castro's death, in which there are definite haves and have-nots, the latter of whom live in shantytowns and lack "running water, sewers, electricity, or the ration books that guaranteed Cuban citizens minimum subsistence at subsidized prices." In such appalling conditions, the loss of a religious statue should seem a small thing--though, of course, it's not. An elegant blend of mystery and sociology by one of Cuba's most accomplished writers. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Padura's signature character, Mario Conde, Cuban antiquarian bookdealer, occasional PI, and former police officer returns, in this rather tepid crime fiction. Set in Cuba in 2014, it begins when Conde's high-school friend Bobby hires him, first to recover his possessions, which have been stolen, and then to find the thief, his much younger lover, who has fled. Chief among the missing possessions is a family heirloom, an ancient effigy of a Black Virgin Mary, which will turn out to be priceless. Interspersed throughout the main narrative are stories that chart the effigy's provenance from thirteenth-century Acre, Israel, to twentieth-century Cuba. Not surprisingly, Conde is not the only one searching for the effigy, and, as a result, there are two singularly bloody murders. In the meantime, Padura, who seemingly never met a digression he didn't like, devotes considerable space to Conde's quotidian life. As a result, the pace of the novel is slow, but the characterization is acute. Conde is likable, and the Cuban setting is the real star of the novel, which will appeal to Padura's many fans.
Library Journal Review
Heretics author Padura, whose edgy literary thrillers inspired the 2016 Netflix miniseries Four Seasons in Havana, brings back disgruntled Det. Mario Conde. Here he's asked by a onetime Marxist, now practicing Santería, to track down a stolen statue of the Virgen de Regla. That search sends Conde back to the Crusades, with the story then moving forward as a Catalan peasant named Antoni Barral appears in various guises throughout history.
