In her brief essay on Garcia's The Agüero Sisters, Rachel Campbell-Johnston describes a loose, sometimes even nebulous, emotionally based plot-line driven by the lives of the Aguero sisters and using Cuban political and cultural history as its bedrock.

Cuba, the outpost of a decayed ideal, nurtures a distinctive temperament. The giddy hedonism of an island which surely senses it cannot barricade itself much longer against the modern world mingles with disappointment of a shattered dream. This novel by Cuban emigree Cristina Garcia captures both these moods, distilling them into the twinned themes of sex and death.

The Aguero Sisters is the interleaving narrative of two daughters, Reina and Constancia. Reina, the younger, works as an electrician in Cuba. Statuesque and sensual, with thighs strengthened by shinning up telegraph poles, her body is an open invitation to pleasure. "If she could grasp nothing in its entirety then...