Miami vice

This is an exhilarating novel. Its general gist is that in a multicultural society so-called honour often trumps virtue, political expediency frequently wins out over inconvenient truth, and comforting illusion tends to be preferable to disagreeable reality. And assimilation is very hard, especially in Miami, where the entire story is set.

The two central characters are Nestor and Magdalena, second-generation Cubans, who begin the book as a couple. Each has a difficult journey to its end, both have to combat monsters (Nestor literally) and both learn a little more about themselves and a lot more about the wider world as a consequence.

Magdalena, a strikingly beautiful nurse, keen to improve herself and leave the Cuban ‘ghetto’ (she knows it isn’t quite the right word) abandons Nestor to take up with a psychiatrist who administers to (and thereby maintains the custom of) wealthy pornography addicts by, if I may so put it, inflaming their propensities.