peteg's blog - noise - books - 2017 01 07 RachelKushner TheStrangeCaseOfRachelK

Rachel Kushner: The Strange Case of Rachel K.

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Kindle. This seems to be offcuts (pre-cuts?) of her first novel, Telex from Cuba. There are three stories:

  • The Great Exception, about the discovery of Cuba by the Portuguese. Cannibalism and a randy Queen. Also a credulous American lady named Aloha taking up residence and being fleeced by a Ferdinand K.
  • Debouchment: a short take on the debauched idle lives of Americans prior to the revolution, and just-as-it-happened.
  • The Strange Case of Rachel K. The leading lady is a cabaret dancer, and her customers of note are the Cuban President before Batista's coup and a French Nazi.

The writing is good, and there's something to everything she describes. It's not at all funny, or spectacularly horrible.