I really wanted to like this. Someone I owe an emotional debt to recommended it to me in August 1992, and he had already proved his literary trustworthiness by having read One Hundred Years of Solitude and bringing with him (on a Live Adventure weekend of camping) a volume of e.e. cummings. Also because it's the only book I can recall about Cuban Americans. Also because it won a Pulitzer. But I didn't.
It was okay; its prose was fine and even occasionally stirring; its plot existed; but it didn't grab me in any way. Sorry, Oscar Hijuelos.