This Week's Read: The Boys from Dolores

Whenever I pick up a book about Cuba, not written by a Cuban or a CIA operative or someone of that ilk, I approach it with suspicion. So it was that I had my doubts about The Boys from Dolores: Fidel Castro's Classmates from Revolution to Exile by Patrick Symmes. I mean the guy had written a book about Che Guevara, which immediately said something. It was the subtitle that snared me. It was just too novel an approach to pass up. And true to his word, the book treats Fidel obliquely, just a few brushstrokes in the portraits of his classmates, enough however to show the nature of the boy and the man and the wreckage he created.

My fears that Fidel and the Revolution would be glorified proved almost groundless. Yes, as one reviewer on Amazon indicated, he did get some historical fact wrong. For instance, his account of the Bay of Pigs doesn't quite jibe with other accounts, even the PBS version. His tiresome iteration about the boys at the school being children of privilege and the contrasting poverty and illiteracy of the countryside is too close to the revolutionary shibboleth. It is also something he seems to contradict when discussing the size of the middle class.

But the true genius of the book lies in Mr. Symmes ability to elicit the truth from those he interviews and, amazingly, from random Cubans he stumbles upon in his many travels through Cuba. It is no surprise that the only other book I've read that comes close to eliciting how people live and feel is Mi Moto Fidel. In both cases, these American authors avoided minders and took the time to really talk to Cubans. The result of which is that their depiction of Cuba is very different from the usual Snow jobs. All of the doble cara, the contempt, the hand gestures that make up the only free expression of average Cubans is here.

At the same time he conveys the present reality in Cuba, he tells the story of a very special Jesuit school in a unique time and place through the stories of those who would soon see their lives overthrown and the history of their nation changed. It is a story that he tracks back from the present, starting with a reunion in Miami. These early chapters are a lyrical, haunting portrayal of loss, as he visits with the survivors of the school in the waning years of their lives. It's an emotional punch in the gut.

The lyricism and the shuffling back and forth in time account for some slow going in the middle chapters. His descriptions of the school, the boys, the Jesuits exhibit a wealth of imagination, a gift for placing himself in their shoes, their world. Suddenly, however, the reader is hurled to the present, only to be sent back to the rituals of the school day. So, at times, reading this book feels like slogging through mud. Yet for those truly interested, it is worth the patience. It is an incredibly dense, incredibly rich book. It is perhaps too ambitious, but it does convey much- from the human face of political consequence, the lost world, the new world, the exile experience, and finally the character of the boy who would be king.