Firefly

Skinny, big-headed Firefly is the eponymous child hero of Severo Sarduy's hallucinatory invocation of pre-Castro Cuba, an endearing waif whose tale begins in the midst of a hurricane, as he kills his entire family by putting rat poison in their tea. Two retired luminaries of the island's medical community take charge of the boy murderer, and Firefly begins work as an errand boy in a nightmarish document depot where old files and papers are his only blankets. He's still a kid. He has bad nights. He's not above wetting the old moth-eaten couch where he's allowed to sleep.

By the time Firefly gets a "fuzzy shadow above his lips," he falls in love with the enchanting Ada, a frisky orphan girl with red hair. He undergoes his sexual deflowering at the hands of two plump young whores. He falls off a slippery pier into a bog swarming with green insects. Unable to stop crying, Firefly finally approaches the legendary Pavilion of the Pure Orchid for the grim revelations of the finale.

Bordering on magical realism, Firefly remains grounded in the grim, realistic details of destitution and poverty, the sights and sounds of a fading, peeling past. It's a sticky world of sugar and rum, with stains and holes and burn marks in its onetime splendor.

Sarduy's tropical island is a nightmarish labyrinth of poverty and corruption, where Firefly is an unwilling pawn. The boy remains a lonely, likable mystery at the center of it all, and his feisty struggle to survive on his own makes for a lyrical farewell to Sarduy's own childhood and a lost way of life. --Nick DiMartino, Nick's Picks, University Book Store, Seattle, Wash.

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