Home > The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love Summary & Study Guide

The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love | Introduction

Oscar Hijuelos’s novel The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love was published in 1989, and soon became a huge international bestseller. It tells the story of Cesar Castillo, an aged musician who once had a small amount of fame when he and his brother appeared on an episode of I Love Lucy in the 1950s. The book chronicles Cesar’s last hours as he sits in a seedy hotel room, drinking and listening to recordings made by his band, the Mambo Kings. Events and characters whirl through his mind, evoking what he has lost over the years: his brother and collaborator, Nestor, who spent his adult life constantly rewriting one song about a lost love; the many lovers who gave themselves up to him as he rose triumphantly through the mambo music craze of the early fifties; and the way of life that disappeared for all Cubans after that country was overthrown by an insurrection led by Fidel Castro in 1959. In telling Cesar’s story, Hijuelos weaves in cameo appearances by several real-life mambo musicians, including Desi Arnaz, Tito Puente, Pérez Prado, Machito and Mongo Santamaría.

This novel, Hijuelos’s second, won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1990, marking the first time that that prize was awarded to a Hispanic author. Hijuelos has published four more novels since then, frequently touching on the theme of immigrants and how they adjust to coming to America.

The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love Summary

It Was a Saturday Afternoon on LaSalle Street
The first few pages of The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love are narrated by Eugenio Castillo, who is the nephew of the book’s main character, Cesar Castillo. He describes an afternoon in his childhood, sometime in the early 1960s, when the landlady called up to the apartment where his family lived to let Cesar know that they were rerunning the episode of I Love Lucy that he and his brother had appeared on, performing the song that Eugenio’s father Nestor wrote, “Beautiful María of My Soul.” When Eugenio goes to the kitchen to get him, Cesar has a difficult time rising from the table, having been out until four or five in the morning playing the trumpet. With Eugenio’s help, Cesar makes it to the couch, and Eugenio brings him a drink of whisky as he watches the most important moment of his life repeat once more.

Side A:In the Hotel Splendour, 1980
Cesar has checked into a room at the Hotel Splendour with his record player, a stack of records, and several bottles of liquor. He wonders if this is the room in the same hotel where he used to take girls in the old days. He recalls arriving with Nestor in New York in 1949 and forming the band. They were from a farm in Cuba and had been playing with a small combo in Havana before moving to New York, where they moved in with their cousin Pablo and his family at 500 LaSalle Street. The early days of the band Cesar and Nestor formed, the Mambo Kings, were slow. They worked in a meat factory during the days and wrote songs, in particular “Beautiful María of My Soul,” which Nestor eventually rewrote forty-four times. Cesar remembers that, before moving to Havana, he was with an orchestra run by Julián García in Santiago de Cuba. He married Julián’s niece, Luisa, and she moved to Havana with him, but one of his many girlfriends told Luisa about their affair, and Luisa left Cesar while she was pregnant. They reconciled for a few months, but then she left him for good. Over the years he sent presents to their daughter, Mariela.

In 1950, Nestor met Delores Fuentes and they started an affair that made Nestor think back to his tragic affair with María. It had occurred several years earlier, in Havana: walking down the street one day, he heard a man and woman fighting, and, investigating it, found a man beating on María. He chased... » Complete The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love Summary