[The] real subject of Paradiso is style. The grouping of hautes bourgeoises Cuban families, their illnesses, deaths, petty preoccupations, are pegs on which to hang a series of elaborations. The triad of young sons growing to manhood, José Cemí, Fronesis, Foción, and their discovery of the subterfuges of Eros, achieves some reality, though less in their human dimensions than as a sort of chess problem. Sensuality and intellectual puzzles, character and incident, the real and the imagined whirl away in the rush of a verbal storm that wishes to concentrate on itself. The lack of stylistic demarcation between the various speakers and the narration is an indication that the aim of Paradiso is exaggerated artifice, not verisimilitude. Words are not transparent tools for the creation of the work, but the work itself. This poses the problem of a novel not concerned with its presumed subject, but with...