The Mortifications: A Novel

by Derek Palacio

Derek Palacio s stunning, mythic novel marks the arrival of a fresh voice and a new chapter in the history of 21st century Cuban-American literature.
In 1980, a rural Cuban family is torn apart during the Mariel Boatlift. Uxbal Encarnacion father, husband, political insurgent refuses to leave behind the revolutionary ideals and lush tomato farms of his sun-soaked homeland. His wife Soledad takes young Isabel and Ulises hostage and flees with them to America, leaving behind Uxbal for the promise of a better life. But instead of settling with fellow Cuban immigrants in Miami's familiar heat, Soledad pushes further north into the stark, wintry landscape of Hartford, Connecticut. There, in the long shadow of their estranged patriarch, now just a distant memory, the exiled mother and her children begin a process of growth and transformation.

Each struggles and flourishes in their own way: Isabel, spiritually hungry and desperate for higher purpose, finds herself tethered to death and the dying in uncanny ways. Ulises is bookish and awkwardly tall, like his father, whose memory haunts and shapes the boy's thoughts and desires. Presiding over them both is Soledad. Once consumed by her love for her husband, she begins a tempestuous new relationship with a Dutch tobacco farmer. But just as the Encarnacions begin to cultivate their strange new way of life, Cuba calls them back. Uxbal is alive, and waiting.

Breathtaking, soulful, and profound, "The Mortifications" is an intoxicating family saga and a timely, urgent expression of longing for one's true homeland."

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction, Audiobook, Cultural, Historical, Book Club

320 pages, Paperback

First published October 4, 2016

About the author

Derek Palacio was born in Evanston, IL, in 1982 but grew up in Greenland, NH. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the Ohio State University.

Palacio's work has appeared in Puerto del Sol and The Kenyon Review, and his story “Sugarcane,” was selected for inclusion in The O. Henry Prize Stories 2013. He is the co-director, with Claire Vaye Watkins, of the Mojave School, a non-profit creative writing workshop for teenagers in rural Nevada.

Currently, Palacio lives and teaches in Lewisburg, PA, where he has completed work on a novel about a small Cuban family struggling to remain whole after fleeing the island as part of the 1980 Mariel Boatlift. He is currently working on a collection of short stories relating to Cuba’s past, present and future.

Reviews

[Elyse Walters · Rating 4 out of 5]

A cuban American story....

Soledad and her two twin children, Ulises, and Isabel come into the United States in 1980 during the Mariel boatlift ....a mass emigration of Cubans who traveled from Cuba's Mariel Harbor to the United States looking to gain asylum by taking refuge on the grounds of the Peruvian embassy, the Cuban Government announced that anyone who wanted to leave could do so. The ensuring mass migration was organized by Cuban-Americans with the agreement of Cuban president Fidel Castro.
Jimmy Carter was President. There were some political problems - It had been discovered that a number of the refugees had been released from Cuban jails and mental health facilities. The Mariel boatlift was ended by mutual agreement between two governments in late 1980 after as many as 125,000 Cubans reached Florida.

For Soledad, Isabel, and Ulises - the Encarnacion family - they didn't stay in Florida - but rather went north to Connecticut.
Uxbal - husband & father ...patriarch of the Encarnacion family stayed back in Cuba.
"Papi was a rebel, Isabel said, and a recruiter. That's why we left. Ma found out that I was at the meetings after Mass with him, and she wouldn't stand for it. It made up her mind".

As I got half way through this story....with each character's uniqueness coming into light....I did two things:
1. I stopped to look up the word 'Mortifications'. It was interesting the different definitions there are. The basic definition is: "A great embarrassment and shame"... discipline… so you can control, rather than be controlled. Self inflicted suffering. Plus there was a long list of Catholic answers to "what is the definition of mortifications" -- all of them having to do with some type of sacrifice.
2. After being satisfied with the definition, I spent some time looking at the cover of this book. It not only draws you in with the eyes lips and colors, but it's a brilliant design which fits this story perfectly.


Every member of this family is in their own box - they are each broken - a step in Cuba - a step in America --a step of connection with each other -- yet each one of them taking different paths-- stepping away from each other.
And no matter what country Soledad, Ulises, and Isabel were in... no matter what each path they each took ....( religion, books, or a lover)....Uxbal who never left Cuba -- has never left any of their hearts, soul, or mind. He is the shadow...that follows them all.

Although I don't think this novel is flawless - it had 'feeling'... and Cuban- cultural beauty.
There's sadness - struggles - transformation for all the characters - and a touch of magical realism.

Thank You Crown Publishing, NetGalley, Derek Palacio,

[Lyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful.

Derek Palacio’s 2016 novel about a splintered Cuban family who emigrates to the United States as a part of the Mariel boat lift in the 1980s is at once poignant, thought provoking, maddening, heartbreaking and at time gut wrenching. But it is also a testament to faith and crossing boundaries both in the ocean and in the human heart. Palacio has sang a song of both family solidarity and intense loneliness.

This is also a dramatic character study of five lives: Soledad, the mother and estranged wife who violently and resolutely relocates her young children away from Cuba; Isabel, her stubborn and soulful daughter, and her twin Ulises, her introspective and thoughtful brother who is drawn to the land and who grows to a giant height; Uxbal, the father who is left behind as an emblematic counter-revolutionary, a living irony of poverty and loss; and the Dutchman, Henri Willems, Soldedad’s lover who is torn between his passion for Soledad and his own complex and tortured psyche.

Interestingly, Palacio uses symbolism and metaphor to describe the family in mythic terms. Isabel, fiercely religious and a Catholic zealot also becomes an animist, a living symbol of the earth mother, a pre-Christian atavist of an earlier Caribbean time. Ulises, being illustrated as a Titan, becomes the pagan Greek god Pan, who reads aloud and hypnotically Aeschylus to a bewildered American crowd of children. Tobacco and tomatoes are a ubiquitous representation of the land, and a constant, earthy reminder of Cuba even in the cold Connecticut north of the family’s deliberate exile.

Using language and imagery resonant of poetry and harkening to great earlier works because of the setting and themes, works like Gabriel García Márquez’s brilliant 1967 novel One Hundred Years of Solitude and Malcolm Lowry’s quixotic and meandering 1947 book Under the Volcano, Palacio has given us a captivating glimpse into a family, a time and a place.

[Esil · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars. I had such high expectations for The Mortifications. Having spent some time in Cuba, I have a predilection for books set in Cuba or about Cubans. Cuba’s complex history and political situation make for interesting fiction – whether it’s a story set in Cuba or a story about Cubans who have immigrated elsewhere. And that’s what I expected when I started The Mortifications. So expectations may have hurt my approach to this book, but ultimately I am left disappointed. Sometimes I can recalibrate my expectations, but not this time. The Mortifications is about Soledad and her two children Ulises and Isabel who move from Cuba to the United States, and eventually back to Cuba. The narrative is very much focused on each of their odd inner psychological states, and the even odder life journeys they end up taking. These don't feel like recognizable characters, and their actions, choices and motivations seemed to get odder and odder. At times, I felt like Palacio was purposefully trying to push readers out of their comfort zones -- some examples: some rough sex, lots of nasty smells and bodily functions, religious fervour, biblical references, classical references -- but it was never clear to me to what end all these elements were mixed in. I have a lot of patience for quirky novels, but this felt like it was beyond quirky. What saved this book to some extent is that despite its flaws in character and story line, Palacio’s prose is truly skillful. In the end, I don’t know if it’s fair for me to rate this one because I ended up skimming much of the last third of the book. I hope Palacio’s book finds an audience, but unfortunately the characters and story really didn’t work very well for me. Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for an opportunity to read an advance copy.

[Angela M · Rating 2 out of 5]

At first I really liked it . The writing is good . Then I felt a little bored but got interested again . I was expecting an immigrant experience story and it doesn't quite feel like that, but more of a dysfunctional family saga. Many layers - philosophical in some ways , who we are , what we want and why , how our roots affect us .
I wanted to like this more than I did ,to understand it more than I did but I'm giving it up for now at just over the hallway point . Maybe I'll come back to it . For now 2.5 stars - 3 for the writing and 2 for the story.

Thanks to Crown Publishing and NetGalley.

[Book Riot Community]

This debut novel about a family divided during the Mariel boatlift is the most engaging novel I’ve read this year. The loyalties and dualities that push together and pull apart the Encarnacion family are complex and wondrous, yet acutely believable. While the family patriarch, Uxbal, is left in Cuba to lead a sparse revolutionary sect, his wife Soledad and children, Isabel and Ulises, head north to Connecticut. They are never able to abandon Uxbal’s gigantic presence, which leads his family to take disparate and profound actions. Throughout, Palacio’s prose is like well-brewed coffee: robust, strong, earthy, and awakening. The Mortifications is without doubt in contention for my favorite book to come out this year.

–Aram Mrjoian



from The Best Books We Read In July 2016: http://bookriot.com/2016/08/01/riot-r...

[Thomas · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a very dense book, and I took a long time to read it(14 days), sometimes reading only 10 pages in a day. The book starts with a Cuban refugee, Soledad Encarnacion, and her two children Isabel and Ulises, living in Connecticut. They left Cuba during the 1980 Mariel boatlift. Soledad's husband and father of her 2 children, Uxbal, remained in Cuba and wanted her to leave Isabel with him. He considers himself a rebel against Castro's regime and hides in the hills near their home of Buey Arriba.
This book is filled with images and religious mysticism. Isabel volunteers at a hospital and talks to dying patients. She believes that she helps them spiritually. She becomes known as "the Death Torch." She decides to become a nun, taking vows of chastity, silence, poverty and obedience.
But all 3, Soledad, Isabel and Ulises are drawn back to Cuba.
One Quote: "...offspring sometimes become conduits for want,another means of engaging a reluctant, distant partner."
I rate it 3.5(rounded up to 4) out of 5 stars. Thanks to LibraryThing and the publisher for sending me this book.

[Louise · Rating 3 out of 5]

This novel explores the ties of family, religion and place. The Encarnacion family is torn apart by the father’s commitment to a counter-revolution in Cuba. In a dramatic departure, Soledad takes the couple's twin children, Isobel and Ulises, to the safety of the US. For Soledad, Isobel and Ulises contact with father/husband, Uxbal, is severed, but emotional ties are not.

Both the beginning and the ending are beautifully written. In the middle the writing is secondary to some jarring plot elements. There are motifs in the style of magical realism such as the house full of tobacco plants; Isobel and deafness/muteness and death; Ulises’s appearance after a fall; the body odors of almost everyone. Without the magical realism writing style, the motifs fall a bit flat. Some of the sex could/should have been edited out.

Despite some disturbing events and some cringe worthy sex scenes, this is a serious work. As the loose ends are gathered, the reader is left with a lot to think about at the end.

While it made the NY Times “Notable” list for 2016, it is hard to rate and harder to recommend.

[Nancy · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 1980, in response to a failing economy, Fidel Castro announced that Cubans were free to leave Cuba through the Mariel port. The Mariel Boatlift transported 125,000 Cubans in 1,700 boats.

Derek Palacio's first novel The Mortifications tells the story of Soledad Encarnacion, wife to a Cuban rebel, who decided to take her twin children Ulises and Isabel on the boatlift to America for a new life. They settle in Connecticut and seem to be adjusting to their new lives, but internally they drift apart into separate prisons, never really free of Cuba or the man they left behind, father and husband Uxbal.

"Know this above all: fate is family, and family is fate."

Uxbel wanted to change the world. Soledad's shorthand records it. Isabel takes a vow of silence to prevent altering what must be, her voice poison. Ulises delves into words, the Classics, especially Aeschylus' The Oresteia, finding catharsis and ecstasy. Each follows a lonely path until recalled to Cuba, where the family is finally reunited.

"Don't forget that forgetting is a sin."

The characters struggle with their inner demons, working out their own salvation.

The novel grapples with so many ideas and character insights I had to stop reading and think. Do words change lives, and can silence protect us? What is home? What do we owe our children, our parents, what promises must be kept? What is the nature of God, of Jesus, of faith? How should we die? How should we live? How should we love each other, ourselves?

Palacio has written an amazing first novel, taking readers on a journey, revealing how life can batter and burnish the human heart until it shines.

*****
Thinking Deeper...

Catholic symbolism permeates the novel.

There is meaning behind the character's names:
Encarnacion, incarnation in English, refers the manifestation of God in human form as Jesus Christ through the Virgin Birth.
Ulises, Ulysses in Latin or Odysseus in Greek, is the hero of Homer's The Odysseus, the poem about the Trojan War and the long journey home.
Isabel shares a name, as Ulises learns, with the wife of the conquistador Hernando de Soto, who became the first female governor of Cuba during her husband's absence.
Soledad is Spanish for solitude, a name given to Mary the mother of Jesus.

The tradition of mortification of the flesh is alien to me as I am from a Protestant heritage. I thought that understanding it better would shed light on the novel.

Humans live in a fallen state of grace; that is Adam decided to do what he desired instead of following God's command. Ever since, humans have needed to control their desires to be a child of God.

Self-denial is the killing of human desire which controls our emotions and enslaves us. Sometimes we use self-abuse to purge our human desire, such as wearing hair shirts or flagellation. Mortification ('mort' means death) is a way to controlling our desire, a discipline that brings freedom.

In Galatians 5 Paul writes that "the works of the flesh are obvious: immorality, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, hatreds, rivalry, jealous, outbursts of fury, acts of selfishness, dissensions, factions, occasions of envy, drinking bouts, orgies, and the like."

The Encarnacion family become mired by these fleshy addictions. Uxbal is an alcoholic, a factionalist who dissents against Castro's government. Soeldad has a relationship with a man not her husband, but who loves her; she loves the Uxbal she sees in Willems. As cancer ruins her body, Soledad insists on abusive sex. Isabel and Ulisesalso use sex for their own purposes, and they share jealousy over the other's parental relationships.

Isabel had listened to Uxbal's singular religious concepts, and inspired by her experience caring for the dying, decides to enter the convent. She is asked to teach the deaf through sign language. Returning to Cuba, she plots to create her own fatherless child who might life a life unencumbered by the sins of a family. Ulises ends up choosing, Christ-like, to substitute for his father's sins.

I will be puzzling over this novel for a while.

I received a free book through a Twitter giveaway. It in no way impacts or influences my review.

[Lolly K Dandeneau · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Ulises considered the history of his mother’s sex life: he assumed that, since they’d arrived in the States, she’d not been with a man until Willems. That was five years of physical famine followed now by two months of feast.”
(my blog https://bookstalkerblog.wordpress.com/)

When Soledad flees Cuba and her husband’s revolutionary ideas with their two children, rather than settling in a familiar place like Miami, she chooses the brutal cold of Connecticut. Ulises assumed they would make a ‘large, loud Cuban family’ together with his mother’s distant cousins in Miami. Soledad instead will purge her old Cuban life, even speaking Spanish only to each other but English everywhere else. To shed her life, what better place than somewhere cold? She flourishes here but cannot seem to forget her husband, Uxbal Encarnación. Isabel too clings to the memory of her father, who has faded in Ulises mind, after all his father took far more interest in her, planting ravenous hunger for meaning, leaving her consumed by a religious fervor. When their mother Soledad falls for the Dutchman Henri Willems (horticulturalist) she tells her son ‘He’s a very confident man, and when he talks about tobacco-I don’t know- it’s ravishing.” While different from her husband, the tomato farmer rebel- Henri is like ‘the best version of the love of her life.” Uxbal is like a ghost in the house, never fully out of their lives, a shadow between the love Henri and Soledad share, but Henri will have her anyway. Their lives in New England alter them in different ways, sending each in strange directions. Ulises doesn’t remember his father nor cling to his memory as his mother and sister do, but he fears his fate is tied to him, that he will ‘assume his identity’ as sons do. His father, a man holding nothing but his ideas, a man who lost his family because of his faith and revolutionary leanings. Henri Willems serves as a stand in father, one Ulises emulates in learning about tobacco. But he has his own superstitions tied into beliefs his own father had, ‘I’ve inherited my father’s fear, Willems said, but also my grandfather’s constitution.’ Ulises sees in this that no man truly escapes his father. Isabel’s religious beliefs will change everything, taking her further away from her mother and brother. The convent is calling to her soul, God becoming a wall keeping her family out. Isabel is losing her daughter, who believes herself to be chosen as a sort of guide to the dying. Soledad goes along with much of what Isabel wants, the only way to keep her. It isn’t long before she herself flees, and the abandonment a wound in her mother, who is fighting a new battle herself, with her health. Is life coming full circle? A letter finds them, becoming as solid as the presence of Uxbal himself. Cuba is calling them back, and where is dear Isabel?

The story begins as a fresh start, a twist in fate through escape but one can never truly bury the past nor sever the ties of the heart. Uxbal is inside each of them, and more than anyone the seeds planted in Isabel seem to rot. Everything she believed about her father, all the ideas she clung to may be destroyed. Everyone is broken. The story leads up to the return to their homeland, and the journey is peculiar. Tracking Isabel, Ulises finds seduction and trouble but he also finds family. “Fate is family, and family is fate.” What is love, what is family? The story changes and becomes rich when Ulises is in Cuba again. These are people who make a multitude of poor choices and mistakes. Their passions, be it rebel camps, farming, God,lovemaking, orgiastic encounters… all seem to pull at them and like a hurricane leave behind destruction. So much is shrouded in secrecy, but all secrets beg to be revealed, every past will rise and in the end, Ulises might just learn it’s better to give solid ground to history rather than camouflage the past. Isabel frustrated me, and it made her more real for her madness, because in a sense her religious hunger does verge on the insane. Her character made me think about how other people can lead us so far from where we should be, how ideas can be implanted (even accidentally) and take on a life so far from what should have been. Was she fated to this higher calling truly? Oh how moments manipulate us! Soledad is a passionate woman, her fleeing Cuba and Uxbal was the path to finding her own strength- but one has to wonder the sort of adults Isabel and Ulises would have become had they never fled. It is necessary to sink into the story and pay attention to every small moment, as much as the big things that happen. It is about culture, because whether you shuck it or embrace it, your beginning will always cling like a second skin. Your roots still nourish or poison you, it’s all in how you chose to go on.

Immigrants live in two worlds, one of their making and one of the past. The homeland is alive in dreams, memories and even strange new places can have reminders. Sometimes those reminders are in objects, tastes, smells, and often even new people. You don’t have to return home, to see it still. We never return to that time, every place and person changes in our absence, but it can still call to us. The Mortifications is about how one family clings to their homeland even when trying to purge it, how it changes them, and what happens when your blood longs to return to it’s origins. There is heartbreak and many strange choices, I spent a lot of time thinking about every character. Cuba is a family member in it’s own way too. The Encarnación’s are all over the place, and their choices have many traps. The ending hit me between the eyes a bit, because it’s so odd yet just right because I can’t imagine a simple ending for such passionate people.

Publication Date: October 4, 2o16

Crown Publishing

Tim Duggan Books

[Marjorie · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the story of the Encarnacion family. Soledad leaves her husband, Uxbal, who refuses to leave Cuba. Soledad takes her twins, Ulises and Isabel, to Hartford, Conn. where a cousin had some connections. There Soledad becomes a court reporter and falls in love with a Dutch tobacco farmer, Henri. When the children are older, Ulises works in Henri’s tobacco fields, while Isabel becomes a nun and works with the dying. They settle into their new life until years later, they receive a letter from Uxbal calling them home.

I really had very high expectations for this book. It’s been described as gorgeous, magnificent, heartbreaking and achingly beautiful. How could I not like this book? Maybe it was because of the lewd sexual scenes throughout the book. Maybe it was due to all the references to body odor and fluids. Yes, I could see the good parts of the book, the longing that each member of the family had for their father and their beloved Cuba, the intensity of Isabel’s religious fervor. But the book for me just grew odder and odder the more I read. It didn’t break my heart. It didn’t even touch my heart. I really did want to find the beauty that others found in this book but it just wasn’t there for me.

This book was given to me by the publisher through Blogging for Books in return for an honest review.

[Alaina]

*No rating because I work for the publisher.

[Shawn Mooney (Shawn Breathes Books)]

Rather than animating the characters or the story, the somewhat overly flowery prose just made me drowsy. Bailed at around the 15% mark.

[Roger DeBlanck · Rating 5 out of 5]

The haunting and tender beauty of Derek Palacio's debut novel The Mortifications has drawn comparisons to the work of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but the wounded depths of his characters and the intimate moods of his settings remind me even more of Michael Ondaatje. Also, his ability to capture the struggles of Cuban immigrants parallels that of Oscar Hijuelos. Palacio deserves mention among these great writers because his novel has the hypnotic power to leave you enraptured and in awe over the complex and delicate examinations he makes into the lives of a Cuban family torn between their homeland and the United States.

When Soledad Encarnacion decides to forsake her husband Uxbal and his opposition to the Castro regime, she escapes the island to America with the couple's two children during the Mariel boatlift of 1980. Ulises and Isabel are twins, but they share little else in common. While growing up in Hartford, Connecticut, they pursue drastically different paths. Ulises is studious, reticent, and without much need for religion. He develops a penchant for the natural world by cultivating tobacco crops. Isabel has a spiritual calling that leads her towards guiding the departed into the afterlife. She enters a convent and takes the vows of a nun. As for their mother, Soledad finds work as a court clerk and begins a torrid love affair with a Dutch tobacco farmer.

Even as Soledad, Isabel, and Ulises acclimate to America in certain ways, the mythical pull of Cuba can never be severed completely from their hearts. Nor can their memories of Uxbal ever be erased. In time, each of them eventually answers a yearning to return to the island. The profound nature of their spiritual and physical suffering is what makes their stories unforgettable and what makes Palacio's novel so powerful. He explores their depths of pain and confusion. He offers blazing insight into the longings and desires that drive their actions and decisions. He is the type of intelligent and gentle writer who makes every detail resonate with meaning. You can smell the cold soil of the New England tobacco fields. You can feel the sultry air of Cuba's mountainous forests. Ultimately, you follow the journey of a family balancing the thin line between sorrow and joy, between the sacred and the profane, and between life and death.

The Mortifications will break your heart while at the same time filling it with euphoria. Palacio is a gifted writer who has accomplished a remarkable feat with his debut novel. I hope he continues to produce work that sears its reward on the heart and mind.

[Debbie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A revolutionary tale about a family saga in the year 1980's who are torn apart, they lived in Cuba on a rural farm. The father is in political insurgent and he refuses to leave behind the revolutionary ideas but his wife wants a better life for her two children so she takes them to America leaving her husband behind hopeing for a better life in America. I love the book and will definitely read more of this author.

[Shannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

In 1980, a rural Cuban family is torn apart during the Mariel Boatlift. Uxbal Encarnación—father, husband, political insurgent—refuses to leave behind the revolutionary ideals and lush tomato farms of his sun-soaked homeland. His wife Soledad takes young Isabel and Ulises hostage and flees with them to America, leaving behind Uxbal for the promise of a better life. But instead of settling with fellow Cuban immigrants in Miami’s familiar heat, Soledad pushes further north into the stark, wintry landscape of Hartford, Connecticut. There, in the long shadow of their estranged patriarch, now just a distant memory, the exiled mother and her children begin a process of growth and transformation.

Soledad and her two twin children, Ulises, and Isabel come into the United States in 1980 during the Mariel boatlift. This was a mass immigration of Cubans to the United State who were looking for asylum from Cuban president Fidel Castro. Soledad, Isabel and Ulises headed north to Connecticut, while Uxbal, their father, stayed behind in Cuba. This book focuses on the lives of these 4 main characters, along with Henri, who becomes Soledad's lover. The book examines many different topics such as family, poverty, loss and the obvious political involvement in the story.

The characters are well developed and the plot focuses mainly on their lives and dynamics. I enjoyed the author's writing style and found it to be very "flowy" and poetic at times. I also really enjoy reading about other cultures; my undergrad in Anthropology often has me very interested in other cultural practices. And I also enjoyed the historical fiction aspects of the story. I do have to say that the author does focus a lot on the psychological states of the characters, which does make since with this story, as Soledad quite violently removes her children from Cuba. Overall, I found it to be an interesting story, with well developed characters and a steady plot. Thank you to the publisher for sending me a review copy of this book. Happy reading!

[Merry Miller moon · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thank you to Goodreads for the free ARC of this book. Beautiful cover. I could not get into this book. There were days that I just couldn't pick it up. The story revolves around Soledad, her husband Uxbal and their children, twins, Ulises and Isabel. It is the 1980's and Uxbal is a tomato farmer in Cuba. It is becoming dangerous to stay so Soledad decides to take her children on a boat to Connecticut to provide a better life for her children. Isabel develops an infatuation with religion and Ulises becomes obsessed with the Latin language. Suddenly Isabel decides she wants to become a nun and takes a veil of silence. Soledad meets a tobacco farmer named Wilhelm and becomes romantically involved with him. This is where the book just completely strays from my interest, there are interactions between Wilhelm and Ulises in which Ulises is discussing his mother's sex life with Wilhelm. WHAT???? What son discusses his mother's sex life? And then from there the book just gets more bizarre. SPOILERS!!! A mysterious letter arrives from Cuba. It is Soledad's husband, Uxbal. All members of the family react strangely towards the letter. Soledad develops breast cancer and then the book just goes to pot. I forced myself to finish it. I can sum up this book in one word 'UGH!' NOTE: this is my opinion. You might love this book. Who knows?

[Rosemary · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a story about a mother and her young son and daughter who immigrate from Cuba in the 1960's. They settle in Conn. Mother becomes involved with a tobacco grower from Denmark. She is still married to a man left behind in Cuba. The mother and the Dane have a complicated and passionate relationship. In the meantime, the children are growing up and their coming of age stories are an important part of the book. The love of county, importance of family, growing tobacco and religion all are themes that run throughout the story. It is an emotionally exhausting book.

[Magen - Inquiring Professional Dog Trainer · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Mortifications is a true work of literary fiction. There is incredible depth here, some of which is challenging to grasp initially, some of which might not be possible to grasp without a careful re-read. Readers without a decent understanding of Christianity, and to a lesser degree Catholicism, may struggle to understand the underlying tone and message of the book. This is an unusual book, one I suspect either people will love it or hate it. I found myself needing to keep reading. I had to understand how all of this was going to play out. If you enjoy books about dysfunctional families or finding your place in two different worlds, you will likely enjoy this book. If you love books with depth and subtley, you will likely enjoy this book. If you are looking for a quick read, you will likely not enjoy this book. It is not one you get through in a plane ride. It is best enjoyed over days, with moments of contemplation between. If you think you might like this book, I highly recommend reading it as there is unlikely much you have read that is similar and it is fascinating on that level. While the story was engaging and I very much needed to know how everything played out, in the end, the story wasn't very memorable and it's certaintly not a book I often recommend. But for a certain type of reader, this is a wonderful book and I'm certainly glad I read it.

I received this book from publisher Tim Duggan Books through Blogging for Books in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to Tim Duggan Books and Derek Palacio for the chance to read this book.

[Lisa R. · Rating 2 out of 5]

Genuine mixed feelings about this one. It was like a Toni Morrison book - I feel as though I should have liked it more than I did. Pros: learning more about Cuba, beautiful writing. Cons: Too many unanswered questions, the only characters I liked were Ulises and Willems, the aspects of the story centered on Catholicism were surreal and hard to follow. I think certain folks will LOVE this one, but I'm not one of them.

[Sam Figura · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Mortifications has characters and emotions that feel so real and powerful, it's absolutely marvellous. I couldn't put this book down! Derek Palacio was my professor last term at the UO. He's a wonderful person and a great writer. I highly recommend this read.

[Carmen Petaccio · Rating 2 out of 5]

Risks next to nothing, and achieves about as much.

[Esther · Rating 3 out of 5]

The prose was lovely and depictions of climate, nature, bodies were very cool and visceral but ultimately I did not connect to any of the characters at all

[Meg (fairy.bookmother) · Rating 3 out of 5]

The sin is in the knowing. The sin Christ confronts in the desert is the knowledge that his body is useless and, dangerously, how easily he can dismiss it. He will see how tiny a thing he is doing. He will know how small he is as a human being, how little he can change the world as a lump of flesh. The moment he knows, he can and will and should let it all fall away. He will enact the right of a God on Earth; he will make food from stone. He will shake water from the clouds. He will walk into a city and take it.

Derek Palacio's debut novel The Mortifications follows a Cuban family in the 1980s. Soledad Encarnación and her two children, twins Ulises and Isabel, leave behind a husband and father to escape the revolutions of Fidel Castro's Cuba. Like many novels of families, this one has its share of interesting characters who all represent some aspect of humanity. Soledad is a mother trying to do the best thing for her children, Isabel finds solace and meaning in religion, Ulises finds himself through the classics and agriculture, and Henri becomes the stand-in father figure.

While I found the first half of the book incredibly engaging, I found the last half stretching for believability and substance. Palacio is a talented writer. However, I found some of the metaphors and similes and symbolism reaching a little too far at times. When I see a character named Ulises, I almost expect a Cuban expression of something resembling Homer's The Odyssey. At first, the novel did feel like it would go in that direction, and it did, a little bit, with Ulises becoming fascinated by classics during a recovery period. I almost wonder, as I've seen similar things before in post-MBA debut novels, if this is a rite of passage, a stuffing of everything you've learned into one novel whether or not it actually works. I felt that there were also too many characters for how short this is. I think following one or two of the characters and their immigration experience (and even their return home) would have made for a richer novel.

However, I did enjoy reading this, and I will recommend it to people interested in immigrant experiences and Cuban-American experiences.

Thank you to Crown Publishing/Blogging for Books for providing me with a copy in exchange for a review. All opinions are my own.

[Courtney · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a bit too cerebral and internal for me. I couldn't relate to the religious pulls for most of the characters, but I thought the nostalgia for a life that never truly existed was beautifully described.

[Karen_RunwrightReads · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beginning and ending in communist Cuba, the characters' family name is Encarnacion, translated incarnation, one who embodies the qualities of God, but also one of the series of lifetimes a person might have, if one believes in reincarnation.  The Mortifications details those multiple lives of these characters, a man who is at once a revolutionary and a peaceful farmer, his wife who leaves him but remakes him in her lover, the twins, two sides of the same person yet as different as is possible, one piously faithful, the other clinging to a shroud of agnosticism. So while the characters initially appear to reject the church and its dogmas, their lives reveal the indelible impression their brand of religion has on them, and over the course of the novel, each one shows a different incarnation of what they believe God is, be it self sacrifice or sacrifice of the one they love.
Read this book if you're interested in politics and Caribbean, specifically Cuban, history and if you like books that explore the complexity of religious thought, without necessarily claiming belief in any one doctrine.
Avoid this one if you're easily offended by coarse language and if you're uncomfortable hearing people spout their own brand of religion as gospel and use their beliefs to justify their behavior.
Fans of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mariana Enriquez and Marlon James might like this one.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Leaving Cuba and her husband during the 1980 Mariel boat-lift, Soledad settles with her two children in Hartford, Conn. There, they start a new life separated from everything they've known, language, tropical heat and familiar customs. As time goes by, there's plenty of self-blame centering on the man and the island they've left behind. Eventually, one by one, they are drawn back to Cuba where they seek to reconcile their earlier selves to the people they've become.
Although Palacio’s prose contains moments of great beauty and magic that are a pleasure to read, I occasionally found myself wishing the characters would engage in less introspection and that the story would move a bit faster.

[Laura Hoffman Brauman · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was probably more of a 2.5 for me. The Mortifications tells the story of a family - mother, son, and daughter who left Cuba during the 1980 boatlift, leaving behind their revolutionary father/husband. There were several things I appreciated about the novel, in particular the sense of both separation and connection to the place and the people that are left behind - and there were some moments of beautiful writing in here. Overall, though, I felt like the writing was overly descriptive at times and that some of the actions of the characters were put in for shock value rather than to develop the reader's understanding of the characters or to move the story forward and it times they seemed inconsistent with the character's previous decisions and actions.

[Joanne Kelleher · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a Book Club selection.
I slogged through this book, with its unlikable characters and their unusual obsessions, the references to ancient literature, the sacrifices in the name of religion, the symbolism; it was all a bit much.
In the end, though, the themes and symbolism made for a rich book club discussion between myself and the one other member who was able to finish it.

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

I stopped reading this for a couple months but I don't remember why. I read the first half when Castro was alive and the second half after he passed. Beautiful writing but i feel like the characters didn't grow at all.

[Jess Lessa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think that this was way too academic for me. Most if it flew right over my head and the lack of quotation marks didn't make it an easy read.