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“... and Ricky and their real-life incarnations, Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, make cameo appearances in Oscar Hijuelos’s spirited and lyrical second novel, The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. Their descent, god-like, into the lives of two Cuban brothers, Nestor and Cesar Castillo, both of whom arrive in New York from Havana in 1949 and who are the lead ...”

“... attracted – Goldman offers a slyly penetrating critique of the Latin American machismo which Oscar Hijuelos celebrated with such gusto in The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love. Even so, the book itself cannot quite escape that tradition, and if it just fails, in the end, to pack the emotional punch which it constantly seems to be promising, this is ...”