Larger	Empress of the Splendid Season Author: Oscar Hijuelos
	Book Information Publisher: Perennial Book Type: Paperback Rating: 3 ISBN-13: 9780060928704 - ISBN-10: 0060928700 Publication Date: 2/1/2000 Pages: 352 Book Reviews

Oscar Hijuelos vividly brings to life the joys, desires, and disappointment of American life witnessed through the experience of a formerly prosperous Cuban émigré named Lydia Espana--now a cleaning woman in New York. In magnetic prose, he juxtaposes Lydia's tale with the stories of her clients, contrasting her experiences with the secret lives of those for whom she works. No one writes better of love or the pulse of a city, nor has any writer better captured the complexity inherent in the emigration experience; how assimilation is at once the achievement of dreams, yet also a loss of the past. Empress of the Splendid Season is Hijuelos at his masterful best, a novel filled with incantatory, rhythmic prose and rich in heartfelt vision.