The Last Night I Spent with You Book

One of the most original and provocative writers from the Caribbean, Mayra Montero is the author of the highly praised novels In the Palm of Darkness an The Messenger, set in Haiti and Cuba respectively. In The Last Night I Spent with You, she explores the mysterious and myriad pathways that desire can fray through the realms of memory and imagination.Celia and Fernando, a long-married couple suddenly alone after their only daughter marries, embark on a cruise to the Caribbean islands to revitalize their sagging marriage. With the complicity of another passenger, the mysterious Julieta, Celia and Fernando lose themselves and their inhabitions as they turn to others to fulfill their fantasies of passion and destruction. Through a series of adventures on board the ship and on different islands, Celia and Fernando bring themselves to the brink of ecstasy and self-annihilation. As visitors on exotic soils, made delirious by the heat and their own heady lusts, the aging lovers mix fantasy and reality until their wild adventure burns itself out, nearly taking them with it.Juxtaposed with the animal passions conjured by the married couple is a series of lyrical love letters to "Angela" from "Abel," two lovers with a secret of their own, explored but not explained until the very end, when their fate mirrors that of Celia and Fernando.In elegant prose, The Last Night I Spent with You confronts the mysteries of death and desire with dark humor and remarkable subtlety.Read More