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    Changó's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes
    Changó's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes
    Changó's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes
    Audiobook13 hours

    Changó's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes

    Written by William Kennedy

    Narrated by William Kennedy

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    From the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Ironweed, a dramatic novel of love and revolution from one of America’s finest writers

    When journalist Daniel Quinn meets Ernest Hemingway at the Floridita bar in Havana, Cuba, in 1957, he has no idea that his own affinity for simple, declarative sentences will change his life radically overnight.

    So begins William Kennedy’s latest novel—a tale of revolutionary intrigue, heroic journalism, crooked politicians, drug-running gangsters, Albany race riots, and the improbable rise of Fidel Castro. Quinn’s epic journey carries him through the nightclubs and jungles of Cuba and into the newsrooms and racially charged streets of Albany on the day Robert Kennedy is fatally shot in 1968. The odyssey brings Quinn, and his exotic but unpredictable Cuban wife, Renata, a debutante revolutionary, face-to-face with the darkest facets of human nature and illuminates the power of love in the presence of death.

    Kennedy masterfully gathers together an unlikely cast of vivid characters in a breathtaking adventure full of music, mysticism, and murder—a homeless black alcoholic, a radical Catholic priest, a senile parent, a terminally ill jazz legend, the imperious mayor of Albany, Bing Crosby, Hemingway, Castro, and a ragtag ensemble of radicals, prostitutes, provocateurs, and underworld heavies. This is an unforgettably riotous story of revolution, romance, and redemption, set against the landscape of the civil rights movement as it challenges the legendary and vengeful Albany political machine.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateSep 29, 2011
    ISBN9781455848966
    Changó's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes
    Author

    William Kennedy

    William Kennedy (b. 1928) is an American author and journalist. Born and raised in Albany, New York, he graduated from Siena College and served in the US Army. After living in Puerto Rico, Kennedy returned to Albany and worked at the Times Union as an investigative journalist. He would go on to author Ironweed, Very Old Bones, and other novels in his celebrated Albany Cycle, and earn honors including a Pulitzer Prize, a National Book Critics Circle Award, and a New York State Governor’s Arts Award.  

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    Reviews for Changó's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes

    3.5/5

    33 ratings9 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Decently written book, but hard to get into. I didn't like the way Kennedy jumped from Havana to Albany - either or would have made a good story - didn't need both. Props, though, to the cool reference to Bonheoffer's "cheap grace". Also liked the quote "after the dog a cold beer is man's best friend".
    • 2/5
      I've taken two attacks at this book. I love the first third. Twice got bogged down at the end. Never finished. Not sure whether this is a review on me or the book. Great initial work around Cuba. Loses itself in America. Maybe that's the Cuba story. But I haven't managed to finish this book and just gave up for the second time.
    • 1/5
      Didn't like this book at all, and I loved the title. I thought it would be interesting. It was a "Blind Date with a Book" selection; wouldn't read this author again Confusing, boring.
    • 2/5
      **********THIS IS A GOODREADS.COM CONTEST WIN!!!!!***********

      This was a hard book for me to read. It was so hard to get into the story. I really did not like it. I felt that the author took every though that every character had and used several paragraphs to describe each thought. Just not an interesting read.

      **********THIS IS A GOODREADS.COM CONTEST WIN!!!!!***********
    • 2/5
      Sounded like a great story about the early Castro years in Cuba but turned out to be not so good. Too many characters but not enough character development; incredibly long, meaningless conversations; pointless plot devices involving senile (George Quinn) or overly romanticized (Renata) characters; too much jumping around in time with inadequate context (we're not all history majors); implausible connections and interactions between all the characters across decades. Another case of a famous writer winning awards just because he's famous.
    • 3/5
      This is a hard book to describe. Daniel Quinn is a reporter following after his namesake and grandfather. He begins in Cuba in 1938 where he is speaking with Hemingway in a local bar. During that time he meets Renata, his future wife. She is exotic and in love with love. Finding herself on the run after the Directorio, a rebel group she is involved with attempts to murder the Cuban president Batista, she and Quinn seek out Fidel Castro. After marrying Renata, Quinn talks to Fidel about his rebel army but when he returns from the jungle he finds Renata missing. The story picks up in Albany, New York where Bobby Kennedy has just been shot. The story then follows Quinn and friends during the race riots. The book kept my attention but at times I was wondering how everything tied together. The last page is the answer. For me it was like hearing a joke, not understanding it, but 2 hours later you start chuckling and say "Now I get it!"
    • 5/5
      What can I say, I love Kennedy's writing. I am amazed how much he can convey while still remaiming connected to his Albany saga. In this one, Daniel Quinn, grandson of the narrator from an earlier novel, Quinn’s Book, begins telling his story in Havana where he meets one of his idols, Hemmingway. Quinn too is a writer who is trying to get an interview with Castro in this Bautista era Cuba. However in this bar he also meets and falls in love with the beautiful though complicated Renata. He offers to marry her almost immediately and although she does not say no, she explains that she is in love with at least two other men. She will change his life. The first section of the novel ends leaving many unanswered questions, leaving the storyline to get pieced together in the next section which takes place in 1968, the day Bobby Kennedy was assassinated. Daniel is now working for the local Albany paper and spends this hectic day of racial tension trying to help a friend not get shot. We also realize that Renata is with him and Kennedy skillfully weaves together the back story of her capture and torture and of their current life. The descriptions of the streets of Albany during this tense time, coupled with the remembrances of Quinn’s Alzheimer’s afflicted dad make for a great combination of history and humor, corruption and companionship. It would appear that Kennedy uses Quinn as a personnel narrator for Kennedy’s own experiences with these two diverse revolutions. In the telling of these two periods of history we are also introduced to many wonderful characters: Renata, George and Vicky and of course the next line of Albany chroniclers- Daniel Quinn. This was my 6th novel of Kennedy’s and it will remain a goal of mine to catch up with the earlier novels that started this amazing literary journey.
    • 4/5
      Interwoven scenes between Albany and Havana are handled adroitly. Great characterizations of peripheral characters but somehow Quinn is less believable than others.
    • 4/5
      This was an interesting book. At once both prone to slow reading and fast run-on sentences, it chronicles the adventures of a newspaper writer in the 1930's in a style dependent upon clichés, metaphor, hip-speak and running references to 1930's pop music lyrics. I found it a bit difficult at times to follow the chronology and to know who was speaking, as narratives were used with and without quotation marks and often mixed within a paragraph structure. Nevertheless, things seemed to eventually fall into place. The senile George was a contrast to the gravity of some of the other scenes. This is not an easy book to read, and a lot of the 1930's lyrics were unfamiliar to me, but overall it is a fine addition to adult fictional literature.Paperback proof edition for review.