This uneven half-memoir is interesting and quirky when not caught up in the actual plot. Its exploration of modern Cuban identity is surprisingly nuanced, especially when compared with The Dirty Havana Trilogy. However, unlike Dirty Havana, Dirty Blonde leaves uncomplicated the issues surrounding race and ethnicity when they’re treated as stable, essentialized concepts.

PLOT! Alysia is the daughter of an American diplomat — OR SO SHE THINKS! When she’s 13, her mom dies of cancer. On her deathbed, she tells Alysia to find her real dad, a Cuban man Alysia’s mother met while Alysia’s not-real-dad was stationed on the island. Alysia sits on this secret for nearly ten years, then decides to take a year off from graduate school* in order to spend a year in Cuba finding her real dad. Her first night, the family she’s staying with steals all her money, and eventually Alysia is forced to turn to jineterismo (a particularly Cuban form of prostitution) in order to provide for herself and pay for the private investigators necessary to find her real father.

During the course of the book, Alysia begins equating Cuban identity to a variety of traits. These include the need to hustle in order to make ends meet, jealousy/female competitiveness, and an unsophisticated form of raw sensuality. Alysia emails one of her friends, reflecting that

Cubanas possess a raw beauty, but without the sophistication and refinement that could be gleaned from a few copies of Spanish Elle. (99)

in regards to the numbers of Cuban women who dress really sexily but don’t have access to thongs or seamless panties due to the trade restrictions/economy. At first I thought this lack of refinement would get problematized — after all, it comes up again when Alysia’s asked to prepare a friend of hers for the return of her foreign lover. The Englishman wants his 15 year old jinetera to get a Brazilian. This is obviously creepy, and while Alysia throws a head nod to that, she spends the rest of page reflecting on the ‘hirsute nature of the Latin female’ (83) and her ‘compulsion to offer its followers [Cuban women who stop shaving mid thigh] a blade and foam’ (83). At this part, I couldn’t help but think of that moment in the Sex and the City movie, where Miranda’s pubic hair “situation” is to blame for her husband’s infidelity. I was actually really surprised to read this in a book meant to be narrated by a girl described as a daughter of Ochun, the little goddess of natural sensuality, gently running waters, flirtation, and love.*

That being sad, some of Alysia’s reflections are quite sharp. At one point, she notes that playing the temptress to tourists is really not so different from playing the ’somewhat wholesome Southern daughter, preppily dressed and attractive but not overly intimidating’ (126), and that the state is intimately involved in legislating the sexuality of women and girls. It’s at these moments (when we’ve really stepped AWAY from the contrived plot!) that Dirty Blonde shines.

*As a graduate student, I gotta say that I see the appeal. LEARNING A LOT IS HARD.

*I might have been especially annoyed, since Ochun is my orisha as well. >_< It just felt VERY Mary Sue to me.

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You know, it says something troubling about a book when its most memorable female character is a chimpanzee… who then turns into a boy.

Plot plot plot. The Last Oracle is the latest entry in Rollins’ popular Sigma Force series, a seres of technothrillers based around the adventures of ingenious military folk. They’re in it for the moral good, y’all. Anyways, at our novel’s beginning, we’re (re)introduced to Gray Pierce, who’s still reeling over the disappearance of Monk, his BFF. Monk disappeared in the course of an earlier mission, and Pierce has been dedicating company resources to finding him. At the novel’s beginning, Pierce is headed into work to follow up on the most recent clue, when a homeless man dies in his arms. Except, kiddles, this homeless is actually the FOUNDER of Sigma Force, Dr. Polk, and one of the leading scientists of our time. He draws Pierce (and Sigma!) into a conspiracy spanning centuries and continents. This is lucky, because uncovering this conspiracy helps them find Monk, who actually got captured by Russians doing genetic experiments on autistic children with psychic abilities. These autistic kids are all descendants of the Oracle of Delphi, the female Oracle consulted by all the movers and shakers of the ancient world. Also, there are Gypsies.

This convoluted plot briefly introduces a myriad of characters. As with many novels of this genre, most female characters are introduced in relation to male characters, so as soon as we meet Elizabeth Polk, Dr. Polk’s daughter, I was all, “Dude, I wonder who’s love interest SHE’LL be?” This talented researcher apparrently falls for Kowalski, a Sigma Force member everyone agrees is a bit of a jerk. She thinks he’s a jerk too, but, like Maid Marian, is secretly stirred by him.* There’s some sort of running joke regarding Kowalski’s shoes, which I think is meant to be character development, but is actually just annoying, and vaguely homophobic.* We also (briefly) meet Shay Rosauro, who’s a Sigma Force member partly brought on to tempt one of the extra-important scientists into talking, and Monk’s wife, who’s mostly important because their love is true and smelling her makes him lose his amnesia. This sounds touching, but isn’t. What’s more important to me are the autistic kids. We begin the novel with several promising girls — they’ve been treated for their autism and are manifesting severely awesome psychic abilities. Sasha, in fact, orchestrates Monk’s rescue from drowning, as well as arranging for her own escape from the nefarious Russians. However, she’s mostly there as a plotpoint, not as a character in her own right. She’s not the child prophesied by the Oracle, and actually ends up spending a large chunk of the novel in a coma. She’s the symbol, though, around which Sigma Force galvanizes in terms of resisting the Russians. There’s also Elena, who’s actually Sasha’s aunt, who’s being forcibly bred with one of Russia’s rising politicians.* Finally, there’s Savina, the mother of said politician, who’s a horrible mother a la the witch in The Unlikely Ones. She gets pregnant by artificially inseminating herself with the semen of one of the first sets of autistic children they’re experimenting on, and is driven mad with power. Also, she’s entirely willing to kill the failed experiments — the kids bred through this experiment, but not demonstrating a verifiable psychic power. While Savina’s actions are one of the major forces driving the plot (she’s the boss of the cabal of Russian scientists doing the experiments), she’s sort of a blank space as a character… like an >>insert horrible mother<< caricature.

Sadly, none of these potentially interesting characters receive as much attention as Martha, the chimpanzee who saves the world and gets reborn as a little boy. She’s nurturing, vividly drawn, and crucial to the plot in a way these other characters aren’t. More importantly, she’s treated as a REAL character — she has fears, a past, a future, nervous habits, and dreams, none of which her human sisters share. I would say I’m surprised by this, but this particular genre has proved time and again to offer only very weak, stock characterizations of the women featured in the cast. The Last Oracle, sadly, continues this trend.

*They begin dating at the end of the novel.

* I mean, the only way it IS funny is if you think there’s something inherently off-putting about a manly manly heterosexual manly man man caring that much about his shoes…. and also, you have to be willing to laugh at the same joke more than once.

*We kinda lose the creepy element of force vibe in this relationship by novel’s end. After both she and her lover are exposed to a deadly level of radiation, she gets his gun so that he can die a merciful death. VERY WEIRD.

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Folks, this is AWESOME.

Okay, basically Walton’s set this alternative history in a world where Britain and Germany work things out, and WWII never happens. Germany’s building concentration camps ALL over the continent, and things suck for Eastern European Jews. Britain’s got its own issues with rising fascism, but, interestingly, Walton examines this rise in the upper classes. So, what we’re looking at are the political machinations leading up to such a consolidation of racial antipathy and political power. We’re also looking at how women’s sexuality and bodies become political fodder in this vast political machine.

On to the plot! Lucy, an aristocratic Englishwoman, falls deeply in love with a Jew, David, who served in the British Army alongside Lucy’s deceased brother. Their love, though intense and beautiful, is just the backdrop — what matters right now is that someone in Lucy’s social set is framing David for a political murder. Lucy and Detective Carmichael, the closeted detective investigating the murder, are in a race against time to find the REAL murderers before David is locked and sentenced to death.

Lucy emerges as an intelligent, caring narrator of sometimes startling cleverness. David, her husband, is also believably idealistic — as the tide of public opinion turns against them, it’s Lucy who begins planning for what they’ll do if they need to flee the country. It’s rare the interracial marriages are treated so well; the reasons behind David’s idealism and his fervent investment in acting more British than the Brits are sympathetically explored through Lucy’s perspective as a member of the class to which he would assimilated, even as she knows that his Jewish identity is so paramount that he will never actually be allowed to assimilate. 

Walton also treats sexuality with a delicate finesse. Carmichael’s lover is never introduced to the reader, but that love is also central to the story’s resolution. The connection between rising anti-Semitism and rising homophobia is closely examined as Carmichael carefully negotiates his dual identities as a policeman and a gay man in a world where sexuality is policed. This theme will, I think, come up again in Walton’s Ha’Penny where Carmichael is also the narrator.

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