Cuba in Splinters: Eleven Stories from the New Cuba

This collection of pieces by 11 Cuban millennial writers offers a portrait of a national literature searching for direction. Heavy on sex, drugs and surrealism, these stories only fitfully convey a sense of place. The most satisfying is the hardscrabble "Exorcism Zone," about a child waiting for his prostitute mother to finish with a client in a bus station restroom. Similarly compelling is "The Man, the Wolf and the New Woods," an account of an author's return from exile in order to repatriate a famous revolutionary's manuscripts. Also notable is "Dancing Days," a tale of dissipated and suicidal twenty-somethings, which is thick with American cultural references, and which closes with a clever plot twist. The rest is a mixed bag: the Bukowski-tinged "Fefita and the Berlin Wall," about an aging intellectual remembering a lover from his youth, manages to be both raunchy and poignant; but "Skhizein (Decalogue for the year zero)" and "Thirty Seconds of Western Silence" are indulgent prose poems. "Epilogue with Superhero and Fidel" is a journalistic rendering of the rise and fall of a communist superhero who can stop time; but "That Zombie Belongs to Fidel!" is an awkward shoe-horning of horror tropes into social critique. The portrait of Cuba and of the island nation's newest generation of writers that emerges from this anthology is a confusing one; the creativity is undeniable, but only a few of these stories are strong enough to stand on their own. (June)