Praise for The Divine Husband:
"A rich and sensuous new novel. Taking as its starting point a mysterious poem by one of Latin America's greatest men of letters and of action, Goldman creates a fascinating adventure story. At its center is not the historic José Martí—the author of the poem—but the enchanting, eccentric, intellectually ambitious and fiercely independent muse Goldman has invented for him, María de las Nieves. Her entrapment in a pretentious backwater society, her tentative, often disastrous romances, her dialogues with a supporting cast of improbable characters who are nevertheless completely believable, are all told sympathetically, delicately, carefully. The result is an engrossing and entertaining book, meticulously imagined, beautifully told."
—Alma Guillermoprieto
"[A] beautiful third novel … rich … deft … seamless … Goldman is completely bicultural, steeped in two literatures. … The voices he gives to each of his characters are in perfect pitch. … One could go on ad infinitum, reading the novel as if listening to a grand Baroque concerto."
—Globe & Mail (Toronto)
"A soulful story about love—from the religious to the romantic … Goldman will cast … [a] formidable shadow, judging by [the] breadth, scope, and lyrical orchestration of his fantastic new novel. … Nearly every page has a moment of lyricism so neatly put it makes you pause and read the passage again. … [A] brave and bighearted book."
—John Freeman, The Orlando Sentinel
"Richly imagined in a double sense … [The Divine Husband] combines intimacy and reach … and a subtle defense of the magic of the imagination. … [It] invites us to think about what we are doing when we decide which countries or stories or lives are large or small, significant or insignificant. … All the known history in this book is scrupulously respected and represented—indeed, the invented portions would not be so delicate and interesting if it were not. … Goldman also knows that the imagination offers its own varieties of experience, and he respects the reach of his characters' dreams."
—Michael Wood, The New York Review of Books
"A classic Latin American novel, written in English … Goldman is a maximalist, and his challenging novel of love, migration, class, and corruption shows off a gratifying literary dexterity."
—Los Angeles Times
"His best. The Divine Husband embraces great themes, without which, as Melville once wrote, you cannot have a great novel—in this case, the relation of the individual to history, love and death, language and reality, among other motifs. … Everything he does with [the] historical character [José Martí] feels exactly right. … Goldman's book demonstrates that the dream of the Great American Novel is still alive."
—Alan Cheuse, Chicago Tribune
"From shards of literary and historical evidence, Goldman's novel re-creates an interlude in the life of José Martí, the great Cuban patriot and poet. … Goldman's Martí is indeed wildly popular with his female students, one of whom … is able, through prayer and intense meditation, to transport herself from one place to another—an ability that provides an apt metaphor for Goldman's sense of both a country at a cultural crossroads and an exotic lost world."
—The New Yorker
"José Martí—patriot, poet, and lover—is at the center of Goldman's complex, sprawling novel, and the secret stories that carry the gossipy fictional truth are woven around his weighty presence. … Goldman possesses the extraordinary ability of telling a story as if its many facets could all be shown at the same time. It is as if the focus of his lens could simultaneously render background and foreground, side wings and center stage. … To write such scenes in all their baroque complexity seems impossible. Goldman performs the feat flawlessly."
—Alberto Manguel, The Independent (London)
"A level of writing, very rare, that takes your breath away … The Divine Husband is an alchemist's brew of history, fiction and legend. … The soul of the sweeping plot, however, is José Martí, the driven, charismatic poet and revolutionary who is the fire behind Cuba's insurgence against Spanish rule. … Who or what constitutes a divine husband? Within these pages, some find the answer in faith, others in a poet-hero, still others in home and country, or in the embrace of long-sought kinship. Their journeys make for a uniquely ambitious and enlightening read."
—Houston Chronicle
"With breathtaking originality, [The Divine Husband] paints an elliptical portrait of the Cuban poet and revolutionary José Martí and investigates the mystery of his famous love poem 'La ni?a de Guatemala.' … Extraordinary."
—Brick (Toronto)
"Not only does Goldman use an intricate net of storytelling to dredge from the sea floor of history forgotten ways of living (some now ironic in hindsight) that once shaped our hemisphere, but he also brings to the surface a glimmering specimen, a flashing hint for the present literary scene to follow in his very book: to now write the Great American Novel, an author will have to take into account the Big Picture. … If that sounds epic, even romantic, then all the better. For it fits the tone—baroque, musical, passionate, even playful—of The Divine Husband."
—Oscar Villalon, San Francisco Chronicle
"The Divine Husband is not only a love story, but a testament to the richness and diversity of the Americas … told with wry, droll humor."
—St. Louis Post-Dispatch
"Wildly inventive … engaging and soaringly lyrical."
—The Seattle Times
"[A] kaleidoscopic historical saga … [that] vividly brings the Americas together."
—Details
"The Divine Husband is a novel to get lost in, a sweeping work of history and imagination that is set in the late nineteenth century in Central America. … A tale of intrigue and love that is juxtaposed against the loss of innocence and tyrannies that tear apart a small country."
—Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
"The Divine Husband presents the peculiar crossroads where love and imagination meet politics and history. … The Divine Husband is … a great miscegenating carnival of ambition and desire. This is why rubber is at the heart of the book—the rubber of plantations, of balloons, of condoms; rubber that stretches, changes form, accommodates, facilitates pleasure, and accepts. … [Its] stories … pour out of a sly, tender imagination. Tales within tales, they are lushly written, vibrant with lovely descriptions of seascape and landscape."
—The New York Times Book Review
"A meditation on the slippery nature of life to art and on the simultaneously artificial and essential nature of storytelling itself … Goldman echoes Flaubert, García Márquez, and even DeLillo … but he remains his own literary master, and in this book succeeds in making the novel new. … A voice of audacity and gravitas that serves as inspiration to writers and readers alike."
—Claire Messud, Bookforum
"A novel that, like Central America, connects North and South America and suggests new ways of understanding their long, complicated embrace."
—Austin American-Statesman
"Ambitious, rich in period detail, animated by dramatic events and colorful characters. It ably links past and present, underscores the ambiguous connections between fact and legend, imagines the destinies of Central America and the Colossus of the North as inextricably entwined. … There is very little that Goldman's sprightly writing cannot bring to life. He makes us feel a nun's zealotry, a politician's ambition, a girl's jealousy."
—Dan Cryer, Newsday
"A historical epic … Goldman's novel sparks with life—with passions, fears, loves, ambitions, jokes, songs, poetry, art. … There is plenty of conflict and suspense, failed romances and genuine heroics, but the novel's deepest pleasures come from savoring the subtle characterizations and surprising cultural insights that highlight each episode. … His novel speeds through the narrative water with the high-powered assurance of a luxury liner. … Goldman has discovered a style that fits his manifold talents and, in this ambitious saga that spans a century of the Western Hemisphere, a story that piques his imagination. … When readers reach the end many will choose to flip back to page one and [begin] again."
—Nashville Scene
"A romantic epic."
—Latina
"Ebullient, mischievous, and sensual … A multifaceted, brilliantly satirical tale populated by compelling and diverse characters, and laced with piquant riffs on everything from miscegenation to hot air balloons. Ultimately, Goldman not only dramatizes the fate of one lush but unlucky Central American country, but also conjures the very spirit of humankind in all its perfidy and splendor."
—Booklist (starred review)
"[An] extraordinary beautiful new novel."
—Esther Allen, Bomb
ALSO BY FRANCISCO GOLDMAN
The Long Night of White Chickens
The Ordinary Seaman
For Yolanda Molina, my mother (my Ni?a de G.) & four accomplices: Amy, Beatriz, Bex, Esther & Aura por el arranque nuevo
El sol despierta:
Un alma de mujer llama a mi puerta.
The sun awakens:
The soul of a woman is calling at my door.
—José Martí
The DIVINE HUSBAND
