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Summary
Summary
Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise , by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Oscar Hijuelos, is a luminous work of fiction inspired by the real-life, 37-year friendship between two towering figures of the late nineteenth century, famed writer and humorist Mark Twain and legendary explorer Sir Henry Morton Stanley.
Hijuelos was fascinated by the Twain-Stanley connection and eventually began researching and writing a novel that used the scant historical record of their relationship as a starting point for a more detailed fictional account. It was a labor of love for Hijuelos, who worked on the project for more than ten years, publishing other novels along the way but always returning to Twain and Stanley; indeed, he was still revising the manuscript the day before his sudden passing in 2013.
The resulting novel is a richly woven tapestry of people and events that is unique among the author's works, both in theme and structure. Hijuelos ingeniously blends correspondence, memoir, and third-person omniscience to explore the intersection of these Victorian giants in a long vanished world.
From their early days as journalists in the American West, to their admiration and support of each other's writing, their mutual hatred of slavery, their social life together in the dazzling literary circles of the period, and even a mysterious journey to Cuba to search for Stanley's adoptive father, Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise superbly channels two vibrant but very different figures. It is also a study of Twain's complex bond with Mrs. Stanley, the bohemian portrait artist Dorothy Tennant, who introduces Twain and his wife to the world of sv©ances and mediums after the tragic death of their daughter.
A compelling and deeply felt historical fantasia that utilizes the full range of Hijuelos' gifts, Twain & Stanley Enter Paradise stands as an unforgettable coda to a brilliant writing career.
Author Notes
Oscar Hijuelos , the son of Cuban immigrants, was in New York City in 1951. He is a recipient of the Rome Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. His novels -- Mambo Kings, Our House in the Last World, The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O'Brien, Mr. Ives' Christmas, Empress of the Splendid Season, and A Simple Habana Melody -- have been translated into twenty-five languages.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Seasoned readers James Langton, Henry Layva, and Robert Petkoff offer a pleasant melding of male voices in this vividly imagined and historical epic about two giants of the 19th century. Polly Lee does all the female voices; many of the women sound too much alike and are too high-pitched and irritating, but Lee is excellent in her main role as the famous bohemian painter Dorothy Tennant, the wife of famed explorer Sir Henry Morton Stanley. The book centers on Stanley's extraordinary trajectory from a poverty-stricken Welsh orphan to a world-renowned explorer. It also features Samuel Clemens, better known by his pen name Mark Twain, who was friends with Stanely during the late 19th century. Hijuelos uses their books, correspondence, and numerous newspaper accounts as a basis for this novel, his last before his death in 2013. The four readers create a satisfying ensemble for this surprising and well-told tale. A Grand Central hardcover. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Posthumous publication of an ambitious, atypical historical novel by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author. When Hijuelos (The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love, 1989, etc.) died of a heart attack in the fall of 2013, he had been working for more than a dozen years on this 19th-century epic concerning the unlikely but close friendship of two of the most famous men in America. They had met working on a riverboat, a couple of aspiring writers, well before one would travel to Africa in search of Dr. Livingstone and the other would become a beloved humorist under the pen name of Mark Twain. Since Hijuelos has long been known for voluptuary narratives of Cuba and Cuban America, filled with song and sex, the Victorian primness of the various tones he employs here stands in stark contrast (though a trip to Cuba proves pivotal). The novel encompasses long stretches of unpublished manuscripts purportedly written by Stanley and his wife, as well as extended correspondence between each of them and Twain. Stanley had been an orphan taken under the wing of a benefactor (whose surname the young man took), and there's a sense throughout that the way Stanley portrays his life is not the way it actually transpired. With Stanley's health and that of Twain's wife in parallel decline, there's a hint of romantic triangle, what Dorothy Stanley calls "some kind of autumnal infatuation," though history left that attraction unrequited, as she remarried shortly after her husband's death. The meditations on time and death in the book's last third are particularly poignant given the author's own untimely passing, but the whole of the novel is unwieldy, with awkward dialogue ("I am wondering what you can tell me about yourself") and juxtapositions (a section titled "Clemens in That Time" follows Lady Stanley's extended account of her husband's death). An Afterword by Hijuelos' widow explains that he was working on the novel up to his death, having written "thousands of pages that he attempted to winnow down to publishable size, even as he continued to expand upon the story." This book is good news for Hijuelos fans, but considering its flaws, it's tantalizing to think of what it would have been like if the author had managed to finish it himself. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Chronicling the friendship between Welsh-born explorer Henry Morton Stanley and beloved American raconteur Samuel Clemens (aka Mark Twain), Hijuelos' deeply researched final novel was completed just before he died, in 2013. Although this expansive look at the connection between two eminent nineteenth-century men may be a departure from his examinations of the immigrant experience, his gift for evoking his protagonists' rich interior lives is on full display. The novel shows a remarkable fidelity to historical voice. It's told through a combination of formats, including straight narrative, letters, memoir, and diary entries all invented, and convincingly so. Even Stanley's cabinet manuscript about his and Samuel's excursion to Cuba fits with the real man's tendency to blur or exaggerate the truth. From their initial meeting, aboard a Mississippi steamship, then moving through their stints on the lecture circuit, Stanley's relationship with vivacious artist Dorothy Tennant, and their beautifully moving ruminations on mortality in their twilight years, their rapport survives several differences of opinion. Both come to loathe slavery but disagree about religion and the value of imperialism, particularly in Africa. By observing them at many moments of vulnerability, readers gain insights into their makeup. Although the book feels unbalanced in places due to its unusual cobbled-together structure, it's an extraordinary feat of imaginative historical re-creation. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Hijuelos was greatly popular with library readers, and he will be missed by them; and his last novel will garner many reservation requests.--Johnson, Sarah Copyright 2015 Booklist
Library Journal Review
The posthumously published final novel of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Hijuelos is a thoroughly researched but fictionalized tale of the relationships between Samuel -Clemens (Mark Twain), explorer Henry Morton Stanley, and Dorothy Stanley, Henry's artistic and aristocratic wife. The tale follows Twain and Stanley together on a trip to Cuba before either was famous, through the years of their acquaintance in post-Civil War America and Victorian England, and up until the secrets of the Cuba trip are revealed to Dorothy by Twain after her husband's death. The work focuses more on Stanley than on Twain and examines themes of love, friendship, family, religion, death, pain, and paradise. The narration is high quality and headlined by James Langton. Hijuelos's wife reads both the author's note and her very touching afterword. Verdict Highly recommended for fans of literary fiction, popular history, romantic historical fiction, and adventure. ["Succeeds in conjuring a bygone era from rural 19th-century Cuba to upper-class London society": LJ 10/15/15 starred review of the Grand Central hc.]-Tristan M. Boyd, Austin, TX © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
