This novel reads like the most unfiltered sequence of events and emotions you could hope to find. From his developing sexuality in a small Cuban village, (involving plenty of bestiality, some activity with his cousin, and being abused by his uncle on the way to the market), to his life as a young homosexual man and straightforward accounts of many encounters, to surviving under Fidel Castro's regime at it's most oppressive. Arenas writes what happened, and it's hard to believe that he's not being honest.
And why wouldn't he be honest, writing as he was, close to his death in New York. His book is an eye opener and told me more than I ever knew about the Castro regime. Not only homosexuals but promiscuous women were targeted. Arenas writes that dictatorships are almost always anti-sex, as , to paraphrase, they are anti-freedom and life force. Writers were also targeted and oppressed as was anybody else that could have been a threat. I learnt to my surprise that Gabriel Garcia Marquez was a supporter of Castro.
Arenas writes about a life that never had freedom. But he writes with more freedom and less restraint than most writers ever will.
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