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Di su nombre
En 2005, el novelista y periodista Francisco Goldman se casó con una radiante y joven promesa de las letras mexicanas: Aura Estrada. Poco antes de su segundo aniversario de bodas, Aura sufrió un terrible accidente nadando en las playas de Oaxaca y murió en un hospital de la Ciudad de México.
Devastado por la pérdida, y culpado por la familia de Aura de su muerte, Goldman se sumergió en una espiral de dolor, entre los remordimientos por lo que fue y el anhelo de lo que ya no sería. Di su nombre —elegido de manera unánime entre los mejores libros del ano por The Guardian, The New York Times, y varias publicaciones más— es tanto una larga carta de amor como un intento desesperado por conservar cada detalle de Aura a través de la pasión compartida de ambos: la literatura.
Francisco Goldman reconstruye en esta novela su historia de amor trunca, donde el amor más profundo y el dolor que ocasiona su pérdida confluyen en una excepcional síntesis, que ha conmovido a los miles de lectores que se han adentrado en el mundo compartido con tanta intensidad por estos dos personajes, que parecieran extraídos de una hermosa tragedia clásica.
«Este libro contiene una escritura hermosa; descripciones hermosas y perceptivas de lugares, embates bellamente narrados contra la ciudadela de la pérdida, contra el firmamento del amor y la pasión, atisbos indelebles del yo como alboroto. Y demos gracias de que así sea, pues es una historia tan triste que únicamente la belleza puede redimirla».
Richard Ford
«Una bellísima historia de amor y una extraordinaria historia de pérdida».
Colm Tóibín
Devastado por la pérdida, y culpado por la familia de Aura de su muerte, Goldman se sumergió en una espiral de dolor, entre los remordimientos por lo que fue y el anhelo de lo que ya no sería. Di su nombre —elegido de manera unánime entre los mejores libros del ano por The Guardian, The New York Times, y varias publicaciones más— es tanto una larga carta de amor como un intento desesperado por conservar cada detalle de Aura a través de la pasión compartida de ambos: la literatura.
Francisco Goldman reconstruye en esta novela su historia de amor trunca, donde el amor más profundo y el dolor que ocasiona su pérdida confluyen en una excepcional síntesis, que ha conmovido a los miles de lectores que se han adentrado en el mundo compartido con tanta intensidad por estos dos personajes, que parecieran extraídos de una hermosa tragedia clásica.
«Este libro contiene una escritura hermosa; descripciones hermosas y perceptivas de lugares, embates bellamente narrados contra la ciudadela de la pérdida, contra el firmamento del amor y la pasión, atisbos indelebles del yo como alboroto. Y demos gracias de que así sea, pues es una historia tan triste que únicamente la belleza puede redimirla».
Richard Ford
«Una bellísima historia de amor y una extraordinaria historia de pérdida».
Colm Tóibín
420 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2011
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4383 people want to read
About the author
Francisco Goldman
24 books196 followersFrancisco Goldman is an American novelist, journalist, and 'maestro', at Fundación Nuevo Periodismo Iberoamericano (FNPI), the journalism school for Latin-America created by Gabriel García Márquez. Goldman is also known as Francisco Goldman Molina, "Frank" and "Paco".
He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to a Guatemalan mother and Jewish-American father. His first novel, The Long Night of White Chickens (1992), won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, and his second, The Ordinary Seaman (1997), was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and The Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and was short-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. He currently resides in Mexico City and Brooklyn, New York. He also teaches at Trinity College (Connecticut).
Excerpted from Wikipedia.
He was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to a Guatemalan mother and Jewish-American father. His first novel, The Long Night of White Chickens (1992), won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, and his second, The Ordinary Seaman (1997), was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and The Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and was short-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. He currently resides in Mexico City and Brooklyn, New York. He also teaches at Trinity College (Connecticut).
Excerpted from Wikipedia.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 486 reviews
June 30, 2011
It’s a strange process, the zigs and zags that can make a reader pick up a book. Case in point: a recent story in The New Yorker name-checked a book called ‘The Art of Political Murder’ by Francisco Goldman. So I recognized the name when I spotted the book on one of the new release table in the store. The jacket description was the money shot for me.
‘Say Her Name,’ while classified as a novel and using literary techniques, tells the true story of Francisco Goldman’s courtship and marriage to the much younger essayist Aura Estrada, and her accidental drowning death in 2007 while vacationing in Mexico, an accident Estrada’s mother and uncle wholly blame Goldman for. So not only must Goldman contend with the depths of his own loss, but the with the guilt from his in-laws’ hatred.
Confession time, friends: I love dead spouse stories. While I typically vomit at the trauma-porn stylings of Cathy Glass or Dave Pelzer, something about widows and widowers always draw me in. I don’t know what it is, maybe I’m trying to prepare for the worst, but I’ll always give them a read, from Joan Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking to Rob Sheffield’s Love is a Mixtape. The form would seem to dictate the author take one of two approaches: testify their own love for the deceased, or convince the reader to love them as much as the writer did. The latter approach rarely works, which is unfortunately the one Goldman takes.
His love for Estrada cannot be argued; it is clear how much she meant to him, how essential she was/is in his life. And if the book were about 150 pages shorter, it could have been perfect, but Goldman wants to recreate her, to make me and you and everyone who reads the book love her as much as he does, and does her a great disservice in the process.
He makes her into an irritating manic pixie dream girl. Goldman wants us to find Estrada’s insecurities over her developing writing career endearing, but I found it hard to connect with the hardships of a woman who not only studies her PhD at Columbia, but starts MFA studies at another institution and gets to flit between Mexico and Brooklyn. Well, poor her. Goldman also wants us to be charmed by her eccentricities, the way she mocks his age, the jeans-under-dress fashion decisions, the Hello Kitty toaster…. perhaps I’m just a soulless asshole [distinct possibility], but the portrait Goldman paints of Estrada seems eerily similar to all the post-grad English majors I’ve ever known, who’ve had their heads pushed completely up their own asses by the isolation of academic life. It’s not anyone I would choose to spend any time with at this stage in my life.
And it’s unfortunate, because Goldman does offer a moving portrayal of his grief, and the difficulty of battling with his mother-in-law on everything from evicting him from an apartment in Mexico, to her withholding Estrada’s remains from Goldman. I was particularly moved by his descriptions of using Aura’s toiletries, his reluctance to use her shampoo, of eroding what’s left behind of her, of his fascination by the grooves her fingers left in her jar of body scrub, these are all truly touching.
But ultimately, it’s not enough to save the book. What could have been an incredibly powerful essay or shorter work sags and bloats as a 320 page novelized recollection. If Goldman had kept Estrada more to himself, the book would have succeeded for me. Instead, I was slogging through the last half of the book, waiting for her to die, and ashamed of myself for wishing it.
‘Say Her Name,’ while classified as a novel and using literary techniques, tells the true story of Francisco Goldman’s courtship and marriage to the much younger essayist Aura Estrada, and her accidental drowning death in 2007 while vacationing in Mexico, an accident Estrada’s mother and uncle wholly blame Goldman for. So not only must Goldman contend with the depths of his own loss, but the with the guilt from his in-laws’ hatred.
Confession time, friends: I love dead spouse stories. While I typically vomit at the trauma-porn stylings of Cathy Glass or Dave Pelzer, something about widows and widowers always draw me in. I don’t know what it is, maybe I’m trying to prepare for the worst, but I’ll always give them a read, from Joan Didion’s Year of Magical Thinking to Rob Sheffield’s Love is a Mixtape. The form would seem to dictate the author take one of two approaches: testify their own love for the deceased, or convince the reader to love them as much as the writer did. The latter approach rarely works, which is unfortunately the one Goldman takes.
His love for Estrada cannot be argued; it is clear how much she meant to him, how essential she was/is in his life. And if the book were about 150 pages shorter, it could have been perfect, but Goldman wants to recreate her, to make me and you and everyone who reads the book love her as much as he does, and does her a great disservice in the process.
He makes her into an irritating manic pixie dream girl. Goldman wants us to find Estrada’s insecurities over her developing writing career endearing, but I found it hard to connect with the hardships of a woman who not only studies her PhD at Columbia, but starts MFA studies at another institution and gets to flit between Mexico and Brooklyn. Well, poor her. Goldman also wants us to be charmed by her eccentricities, the way she mocks his age, the jeans-under-dress fashion decisions, the Hello Kitty toaster…. perhaps I’m just a soulless asshole [distinct possibility], but the portrait Goldman paints of Estrada seems eerily similar to all the post-grad English majors I’ve ever known, who’ve had their heads pushed completely up their own asses by the isolation of academic life. It’s not anyone I would choose to spend any time with at this stage in my life.
And it’s unfortunate, because Goldman does offer a moving portrayal of his grief, and the difficulty of battling with his mother-in-law on everything from evicting him from an apartment in Mexico, to her withholding Estrada’s remains from Goldman. I was particularly moved by his descriptions of using Aura’s toiletries, his reluctance to use her shampoo, of eroding what’s left behind of her, of his fascination by the grooves her fingers left in her jar of body scrub, these are all truly touching.
But ultimately, it’s not enough to save the book. What could have been an incredibly powerful essay or shorter work sags and bloats as a 320 page novelized recollection. If Goldman had kept Estrada more to himself, the book would have succeeded for me. Instead, I was slogging through the last half of the book, waiting for her to die, and ashamed of myself for wishing it.
March 7, 2011
Grief is, by and large, a private and intimate thing. We utter a few platitudes and then turn away in discomfort from who are laid bare by their grief. And emotionally, we begin to withdraw.
Francisco Goldman shatters those boundaries in his devastating book Say Her Name, forcing the reader to pay witness to the exquisite and blinding pain of a nearly unbearable loss. He positions the reader as a voyeur in a most intimate sadness, revealing the most basic nuances and details and the most complex ramifications of the loss of someone dear.
And in the process, he captures our attention, rather like Samuel Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, until the reader is literally as fascinated and transfixed with Aura Estrada – Francisco Goldman’s young and doomed wife – as he himself is. It is a masterful achievement, hard to read, hard to pull oneself away from.
The barebones of his story are these: Francisco Goldman married a much younger would-be writer named Aura, who gives every indication of literary greatness. They revel in their marriage for two short years, but right before their second anniversary, Aura breaks her neck while body surfing and dies the next day. Francisco is raw with grief, which is exacerbated by Aura’s passionately devoted and controlling mother Juanita, who blames him for the tragedy.
Brick by brick, Francisco builds a literary altar to the vibrant and exuberant woman he married. And at the same time, he lays naked his own grief at her loss: “Little did I suspect would come pouring out of me, that I would ever learn what it was like to feel swallowed up by my own sobbing, grief sucking me like marrow from a bone.” And later: “Every day a ghostly train. Every day the ruin of the day that was supposed to have been. Every second on the clock clicking forward, anything I do or see or think, all of it made of ashes and charred shards, the ruins of the future.”
Hungry to keep Aura alive, Francisco takes us back to Aura’s past, to her complex relationship with her overbearing mother and her yearning for the father who left when she was only four years old (setting her on a course to look for a father replacement). He showcases various writings that Aura created in her advanced studies at Columbia and under the tutelage of two famous authors (revealed in bios to be Peter Carey and Colum McCann) for her MFA program. He paints a word picture of Aura as a young girl, a daughter, a wife, and a writer on the cusp of potential greatness.
And in order to keep himself sane, he channels his grief into his art, documenting their time together and Aura’s extraordinary life: “This is why we need beauty to illuminate even what has most broken…Not to help us transcend or transform it into something, but first and foremost to help us see it.”
At its core, Say Her Name is not “another grief book” but a love story, a tribute to Aura, a universal narrative of what happens when one loved one survives another. It is, I suspect, a novel that Francisco Goldman did not choose to write, but had to write. It is a wrenching and eloquent book of remembrance.
Francisco Goldman shatters those boundaries in his devastating book Say Her Name, forcing the reader to pay witness to the exquisite and blinding pain of a nearly unbearable loss. He positions the reader as a voyeur in a most intimate sadness, revealing the most basic nuances and details and the most complex ramifications of the loss of someone dear.
And in the process, he captures our attention, rather like Samuel Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, until the reader is literally as fascinated and transfixed with Aura Estrada – Francisco Goldman’s young and doomed wife – as he himself is. It is a masterful achievement, hard to read, hard to pull oneself away from.
The barebones of his story are these: Francisco Goldman married a much younger would-be writer named Aura, who gives every indication of literary greatness. They revel in their marriage for two short years, but right before their second anniversary, Aura breaks her neck while body surfing and dies the next day. Francisco is raw with grief, which is exacerbated by Aura’s passionately devoted and controlling mother Juanita, who blames him for the tragedy.
Brick by brick, Francisco builds a literary altar to the vibrant and exuberant woman he married. And at the same time, he lays naked his own grief at her loss: “Little did I suspect would come pouring out of me, that I would ever learn what it was like to feel swallowed up by my own sobbing, grief sucking me like marrow from a bone.” And later: “Every day a ghostly train. Every day the ruin of the day that was supposed to have been. Every second on the clock clicking forward, anything I do or see or think, all of it made of ashes and charred shards, the ruins of the future.”
Hungry to keep Aura alive, Francisco takes us back to Aura’s past, to her complex relationship with her overbearing mother and her yearning for the father who left when she was only four years old (setting her on a course to look for a father replacement). He showcases various writings that Aura created in her advanced studies at Columbia and under the tutelage of two famous authors (revealed in bios to be Peter Carey and Colum McCann) for her MFA program. He paints a word picture of Aura as a young girl, a daughter, a wife, and a writer on the cusp of potential greatness.
And in order to keep himself sane, he channels his grief into his art, documenting their time together and Aura’s extraordinary life: “This is why we need beauty to illuminate even what has most broken…Not to help us transcend or transform it into something, but first and foremost to help us see it.”
At its core, Say Her Name is not “another grief book” but a love story, a tribute to Aura, a universal narrative of what happens when one loved one survives another. It is, I suspect, a novel that Francisco Goldman did not choose to write, but had to write. It is a wrenching and eloquent book of remembrance.
March 19, 2011
Who am I now that you’re gone?
This is a book of grieving. An aging literary academic marries a much younger woman with literary ambitions of her own. They have a few wonderful years and then she tragically dies despite his efforts to save her. He blames himself and so does her mother. This is also a book of obsession. Both Frank, the husband, and Aura's mother pit themselves against one another as each live with their regrets and loss. Frank hangs on to her clothes and other possessions, he sees her ghost in the tree outside his house, and he avoids the people and places they loved.
I've read several memoirs concerning grief written by female writers. This gives a male perspective. Living without someone who's become a part of us can feel like you've been ripped in two. Goldman does a good job of conveying this.
This review was based on an ebook supplied by the publisher.
3.5/5
This is a book of grieving. An aging literary academic marries a much younger woman with literary ambitions of her own. They have a few wonderful years and then she tragically dies despite his efforts to save her. He blames himself and so does her mother. This is also a book of obsession. Both Frank, the husband, and Aura's mother pit themselves against one another as each live with their regrets and loss. Frank hangs on to her clothes and other possessions, he sees her ghost in the tree outside his house, and he avoids the people and places they loved.
I've read several memoirs concerning grief written by female writers. This gives a male perspective. Living without someone who's become a part of us can feel like you've been ripped in two. Goldman does a good job of conveying this.
This review was based on an ebook supplied by the publisher.
3.5/5
December 24, 2013
My first impression of this book was that it was magnificent. I could only read a tiny bit at a time because of the crushing weight of the loss that the author experienced after the untimely death of his wife. The book gets two stars for this part alone. The rest was crap.
After I got into the book a little more, I honestly started to dislike the wife and wonder why anyone would have mourned her loss. She married a man almost old enough to be her father (and, yes, she had daddy issues) and regularly told him he was ugly, he was old, he needed Botox/plastic surgery. Her vanity insisted that he dye his hair black for their wedding. He seemed to think that all of this hatred his young wife expressed for him was adorable. I could not comprehend how he fawned over this woman, and my growing dislike of her made the rest of the book difficult to read. I lost my ability to empathize with the loss of this woman, and I started to wonder what was wrong with someone who so deeply mourned a woman who showed him such contempt.
It's hard to write about yourself and make yourself vulnerable to your readers' judgment, but the author did. So we hear about the things he kept hidden from his wife - the threesome with two middle aged Mexican whores, the regular visits to a Mexican whorehouse, the penchant for sleeping with women in their 20's (as his wife was when he met her. . . and he's a college professor, that's not trite and disgusting, huh). And then there are the friends of his dead wife who he fucked or attempted to fuck after her death - loss makes people do strange things, but this was pushing it. Well, clearly he has issues with women.
I think this couple deserved each other. I only wish they kept their issues to themselves. At least they didn't reproduce.
After I got into the book a little more, I honestly started to dislike the wife and wonder why anyone would have mourned her loss. She married a man almost old enough to be her father (and, yes, she had daddy issues) and regularly told him he was ugly, he was old, he needed Botox/plastic surgery. Her vanity insisted that he dye his hair black for their wedding. He seemed to think that all of this hatred his young wife expressed for him was adorable. I could not comprehend how he fawned over this woman, and my growing dislike of her made the rest of the book difficult to read. I lost my ability to empathize with the loss of this woman, and I started to wonder what was wrong with someone who so deeply mourned a woman who showed him such contempt.
It's hard to write about yourself and make yourself vulnerable to your readers' judgment, but the author did. So we hear about the things he kept hidden from his wife - the threesome with two middle aged Mexican whores, the regular visits to a Mexican whorehouse, the penchant for sleeping with women in their 20's (as his wife was when he met her. . . and he's a college professor, that's not trite and disgusting, huh). And then there are the friends of his dead wife who he fucked or attempted to fuck after her death - loss makes people do strange things, but this was pushing it. Well, clearly he has issues with women.
I think this couple deserved each other. I only wish they kept their issues to themselves. At least they didn't reproduce.
June 19, 2011
Like many other readers, I had previously read the news reports of the death of Francisco Goldman's wife in a tragic swimming accident and the subsequent pain of his mother-in-law's accusations against him. His wife was young and beautiful, and he was a successful author and they were deeply in love. They were just a month shy of their 2 year anniversary when they took a vacation together in Mexico and she sustained a fatal injury while body-surfing at a remote beach. The pain this man suffered seeps through the pages of the book and spreads a dreadful gloom all around.
First I felt so sad and sorry for him, for her, for all the friends and relatives affected by this tragedy. And then I started to get annoyed. Enough already. It's like spending a night with a maudlin drunk who just can't stop talking about how wonderful his wife/lover was, and how sad and pathetic his life is without her. Worse, it's like watching a Pepe Le Pew cartoon because he keeps talking to his dead wife calling her alternately by name and as " mi amor", my love, etc.
Not to sound like a vulture, but I really wanted to get to the description of the accident because I wanted to know what happened. So I started skimming the book to find the climax, sidetracked by all the digressions and back and forth scenes in the narrative. The description of the incident ( finally) did seem incredible, remarkable, sad, suspenseful, pitiful, dramatic and truly tear-jerking. It was so well written that it seemed to be from another author. It was truly a modern day tragedy, and I don't mean to imply by my comments that I don't have compassion for this poor man's dreadful loss.
First I felt so sad and sorry for him, for her, for all the friends and relatives affected by this tragedy. And then I started to get annoyed. Enough already. It's like spending a night with a maudlin drunk who just can't stop talking about how wonderful his wife/lover was, and how sad and pathetic his life is without her. Worse, it's like watching a Pepe Le Pew cartoon because he keeps talking to his dead wife calling her alternately by name and as " mi amor", my love, etc.
Not to sound like a vulture, but I really wanted to get to the description of the accident because I wanted to know what happened. So I started skimming the book to find the climax, sidetracked by all the digressions and back and forth scenes in the narrative. The description of the incident ( finally) did seem incredible, remarkable, sad, suspenseful, pitiful, dramatic and truly tear-jerking. It was so well written that it seemed to be from another author. It was truly a modern day tragedy, and I don't mean to imply by my comments that I don't have compassion for this poor man's dreadful loss.
June 14, 2012
There is nothing that I could write that would do this man, this woman or this testimony justice.
What I can say is this:
This book quite literally broke my heart. The time it took me to read it saw me sink into a profound state of melancholy which was fuelled by its piercing, untouchable beauty, and the doom that encapsulated it.
I just finished it, and I lay in bef, tears streaming down my face, heart racing, stomach in knots...depleted...by the awe and horror it inspired.
Read this book. I urge you.
What I can say is this:
This book quite literally broke my heart. The time it took me to read it saw me sink into a profound state of melancholy which was fuelled by its piercing, untouchable beauty, and the doom that encapsulated it.
I just finished it, and I lay in bef, tears streaming down my face, heart racing, stomach in knots...depleted...by the awe and horror it inspired.
Read this book. I urge you.
May 26, 2014
Creo que he ganado una nueva respuesta a la pregunta: ¿por qué lees?
Ahora podría responder: "Léete algo como 'Di su nombre' de Francisco Goldman, y te darás una idea muy cercana de por qué leemos".
Incluso podría responder la pregunta de por qué escribimos.
Proust se dio a la búsqueda del tiempo perdido y a ello dedicó su obra. Joyce se afanó en el lenguaje como personaje en una etapa final y en lograr un día. Un solo día.
Borges nos legó su Funes y su Menard y sus libros de arena interminables y sus centros del universo bajo una escalera.
Goldman nos deja a Aura. A "su" Aura.
Acabo de ver en la biblioteca de papá un libro de ella que editaron después de su muerte y no estoy tan seguro que quiera leerla, aunque sé que terminaré haciéndolo.
Goldman escribe desde un lugar muy común a todos, pero, muy difícil de traducir. Escribe desde el dolor, desde la pérdida. Escribe también desde el amor, pero, un amor abstracto que está en el corazón y está en un árbol y está en unas olas que ya rompieron y de las que apenas vemos espuma que vuelve al mar.
"Di su nombre" es un libro que te lleva por distintos sentimientos, las primeras 200 páginas podría decir que odié a su narrador. Más leía más lo odiaba. Pero, se entreveía que habría algo más. Y así fue.
Hay una parte brutal casi al final de las poco más de 400 páginas que te dan la certeza de porqué era necesario acompañar al narrador durante todo ese viaje.
La prosa es una prosa limpia, cuidada, muy mesurada incluso en aquellos momentos donde muchos nos hubiéramos quebrado o hubiéramos brincado al más ramplón sentimentalismo, Goldman escribe con pies de plomo y una mente despejada, escribe sobrio donde muchos sucumbiríamos a la embriaguez más inmediata.
Finalmente se traduce una honestidad genuina. Una desnudez literaria basta y directa.
¿Perdón? ¿Qué si es una historia de amor? ¡Por supuesto! ¿De qué otra cosa podría estar hablando?
"Es una historia de amor como no hay otra igual…". Es una historia de un amor interrumpido por el destino. Por el destino fatal que a todos nos espera. No hay más.
Gracias, Francisco. Gracias por escribirlo. No sé dónde estén los ajolotes, pero sé que siempre podré volver a las páginas de este libro y releerlo.
Ahora podría responder: "Léete algo como 'Di su nombre' de Francisco Goldman, y te darás una idea muy cercana de por qué leemos".
Incluso podría responder la pregunta de por qué escribimos.
Proust se dio a la búsqueda del tiempo perdido y a ello dedicó su obra. Joyce se afanó en el lenguaje como personaje en una etapa final y en lograr un día. Un solo día.
Borges nos legó su Funes y su Menard y sus libros de arena interminables y sus centros del universo bajo una escalera.
Goldman nos deja a Aura. A "su" Aura.
Acabo de ver en la biblioteca de papá un libro de ella que editaron después de su muerte y no estoy tan seguro que quiera leerla, aunque sé que terminaré haciéndolo.
Goldman escribe desde un lugar muy común a todos, pero, muy difícil de traducir. Escribe desde el dolor, desde la pérdida. Escribe también desde el amor, pero, un amor abstracto que está en el corazón y está en un árbol y está en unas olas que ya rompieron y de las que apenas vemos espuma que vuelve al mar.
"Di su nombre" es un libro que te lleva por distintos sentimientos, las primeras 200 páginas podría decir que odié a su narrador. Más leía más lo odiaba. Pero, se entreveía que habría algo más. Y así fue.
Hay una parte brutal casi al final de las poco más de 400 páginas que te dan la certeza de porqué era necesario acompañar al narrador durante todo ese viaje.
La prosa es una prosa limpia, cuidada, muy mesurada incluso en aquellos momentos donde muchos nos hubiéramos quebrado o hubiéramos brincado al más ramplón sentimentalismo, Goldman escribe con pies de plomo y una mente despejada, escribe sobrio donde muchos sucumbiríamos a la embriaguez más inmediata.
Finalmente se traduce una honestidad genuina. Una desnudez literaria basta y directa.
¿Perdón? ¿Qué si es una historia de amor? ¡Por supuesto! ¿De qué otra cosa podría estar hablando?
"Es una historia de amor como no hay otra igual…". Es una historia de un amor interrumpido por el destino. Por el destino fatal que a todos nos espera. No hay más.
Gracias, Francisco. Gracias por escribirlo. No sé dónde estén los ajolotes, pero sé que siempre podré volver a las páginas de este libro y releerlo.
August 19, 2012
In the first place, I'm not sure how this book can be classified a novel. Memoir, perhaps, to escape the somewhat more rigorous expectations of biography; but this is the (apparently?) true story of the author's tragic loss of his young wife, Aura, to a freak accident, and nothing about the writing at any point indicates that it has been fictionalized, down to the inclusion of (apparently?) actual passages from Aura's notebooks. Beyond that rather unimportant technical objection, I found the device of using the investigation into the death, which Aura's family initiates (an investigation that implicates the author in the death) manipulative, since it sets the book up as a murder mystery in which the author will exculpate himself of the charge that he killed his wife; but in fact the accusations are utterly groundless and arise from Aura's mother's despair at Aura's death. The repetition of facts about the "murder investigation," as if it possibly held some basis in fact, as a way to keep the reader reading was utterly unnecessary, especially when it is fairly simply dismissed by the author toward the end of the book. Third, though Goldman clearly adored his wife, I did not adore the portrait he paints of her here (young academic with fairly typical objections to the academy; young woman with deep, unsettled traumas over her abandonment by her father)--to my mind, Goldman spends too much time trying to convince me how lovable Aura is and too little time telling me how much he actually loved her (that is, I don't have to love her in order to believe he did, and the story is a memoir of his grief not her life). Finally, the book is much too long and becomes repetitious in the themes and contents of its anecdotes. It starts lyrically and ends movingly, but much in the middle left me cold. I wanted to like this book very much but simply wasn't moved in the end (not because I lacked empathy for the author's loss but because it did not live up to his obviously great love).
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
September 28, 2013
Conocí a Pancho mediante la entrevista de Puig. Al verlo titubeante, con un habla entrecortada y pocha, con una semisonrisa entre estúpida y dolida, recordé las emociones que me hizo vivir su novela, desde el goce por el amor vivido hasta el llanto clamoroso por la pérdida de Aura. No importa que tan buena escritora haya sido Aura, sino lo inmensamente que fue amada. Y esto lo lees y lo vives. Del hecho cotidiano con sus vaivenes rutinarios hasta la honda tragedia que significa que te pase algo, un accidente imbécil que te lleva a la muerte, y aquí en México el dolor se decuplica y abisma. Y la culpa que la familia quiere hacer recaer en el hombre que la niña muerta decidió amar. Sobrevives en este mar de tonterías porque te amaron y te sentiste amado y amaste y amas. Lleno de gringadas, gastamos tanto, declaré esto y lo otro, me amenazaron, todo por amar y ser amado. Lo que importa. La lees y si viviste alguna vez esto que se llama amor te conmueves y lloras y das gracias por que alguien comparte su dolor por el amor perdido. Pensaba que esta era su primera novela, no sé si leeré las demás porque no creo que alcancen la cima de su love story. Ya decidiré después.
May 17, 2013
I had all kinds of feelings going through me while reading this book. At first I was kind of worried because I was having a hard time feeling sympathy for Goldman, and I thought it was terrible of me, he lived a terrible loss, and he felt the need to write about it. But I just could not completely understand his point of view in the whole story, he seemed like a very selfish person, and he seemed to have made himself the center of the world with that terrible story of his true love being lost. I know it seems insensitive of me to say this, but it´s what I was feeling. Being a mother myself, I could not help thinking that he was shutting out all other people who might have suffered for the death of his wife.
But to tell you the truth, its such a sad sad story, and he describes every part of it to the point where you feel you maybe are reading too much into his pain, that you can´t help but put yourself in his place, and feel how writing can sometimes save people. And this book seems to have done just that for him.
But to tell you the truth, its such a sad sad story, and he describes every part of it to the point where you feel you maybe are reading too much into his pain, that you can´t help but put yourself in his place, and feel how writing can sometimes save people. And this book seems to have done just that for him.
August 13, 2011
Once, looking for comfort in my own blinding grief, I sought solace in the book "Grief" by C. S. Lewis. I simply couldn't find any books on the market that could reach the level of agony I was experiencing, nor could I find another human being who could relate to it. "Grief" failed to comfort me with it's intellectualizing the process of grief. Grief of losing my husband had left me crying out for understanding--for some relief from the pain. Grief is emotional and physical agony...it's not something that just dissipates as the days go by like people say it does. It's something that rewires you, shatters your whole life and changes you forever. Finally, Francisco Goldman has touched the ends of that agony and is capable of sharing it with us. There is hope for those who need that comfort now...both for women and men.
Francisco Goldman is positively a man familiar with the agonies of grief. He knows the living death of grief. He knows the impossiblities of having to go on living after the death of the one person who makes life worth living. And, he is the most gorgeous and generous of tellers of that experience I have ever known to be alive in my time. He's a writer of the most profound gifts to share.
"Say Her Name" is a magnificent tribute to Goldman's love, Aura, his precious young wife of only 4 years. Her life affected him in such a way as to brand his heart and soul eternally, and he shows that in an eloquence of language and writing that is timeless, heart-wrenching, and a memorial of their relationship.
I was simply spellbound by his story and his prose. Although this book is non-fiction, you will be instantly gripped by the love story and the angst of it. It is a book that haunts you.
Descriptively, Goldman is a master writer. Let me quote him as he speaks of loss and desolution here:
"Every day a ghostly ruin. Every day the ruin of the day that was supposed to have been. Every second on the clock clicking forward, anything I do or see or think, all of it made of ashes and charred shards, the ruins of the future. The life we were going to live, the years we were going to spend together, it was as if that life had already occurred millennia ago, in a lost secret city deep in the jungle, now crumbled into ruins, overgrown, its inhabitants extinguished, never discovered, their story never told by any human being outside it--a lost city with a lost name that only I remember--"
What touched me at a level of wonder and anger, actually, was that in the telling of his relationship with his wife, Aura, I saw Mr. Goldman's self-effacing and self-sacrificing love; while Aura's was more narcissistic and selfish. Although Francisco gave her his all in love, she was often "ashamed" of him, hiding him away from her college peers, "made jokes" about his age and how ugly he was; i.e., he was easily 30 yrs. older, and manipulated him into all sorts of things. Goldman shares these qualities openly and without rancour as a part of who Aura was and what their relationship was like; but, as a reader, I was struck by how insensitive she was to him in return of his obvious devotion to her. Was he was aware of this as he wrote the book? I doubt it. I believe he was only telling the parts about her that he remembered and wanted to preserve. I don't mean to say that Aura didn't love Francisco, she seemed to, of course, and they had a beautiful relationship, but his love was more profound, I think. Aura was a young woman intent on being a writer and she had determination to that end.
Francisco considers even Aura's flaws precious and enduringly "her," in essence. At one point he describes her not wanting to wear her wedding ring because she was embarrassed, and he understood, even wondering if she'd lost it all together since it was so often off her finger. He had paid a small fortune for the ring, but in his mind he tells that it would have been fine with him if she'd lost the ring (the price of a car!) because "just that she'd accepted it to say they were married at one time" was enough for him. And, he'd buy her another if she wanted it. I found that wholly shocking in the selflessness of love. But, in that he said it the way he said it made it resonate with truth for me. He loved Aura profoundly, more than he loved himself.
This is a book that plumbs the depths of love and despair. It is so heartachingly written that it sometimes overwhelms the text itself; I was struck silent in reading as my mind stopped to comprehend the depth of the personal secrets he shares.
This paragraph describes the joy and excitement of love better than any I've read in recent years...the visual, the spiritual, the psychological, the senses, the joy:
"...I slipped into the shop and bought a necklace that Aura had seemed to like. That's how I was, buying her presents, an overjoyed spendthrift piling up credit card debt with squirrelly endeavor. Overcoming that mysterious three-day crisis had strengthened our love--our mystical wedding...just two weeks away. I took a picture of Aura, in sleeveless black shirt, standing on the balcony outside our room in the late afternoon, a hazy blue mountain backdrop, her cheeks and nose flushed, a bashful smile and tilt to her head, a soft vulnerable shine to her eyes, all of this making her look even younger, startlingly and preposterously younger, like an enamored, just-ravished quinceanera, I recognize with some disbelief every time I look at that photograph. As evening fell, the mountainside grew so feverishly alive with sparkling and moving lights it was like a shaken-up snow globe, and a faint electric noisiness filled the air, as if coming from insect-sized motors and music boxes floating across the valley. We sat on the balcony, drinking wine. I pulled the necklace from my pocket."
It is not until the end of the book that we learn of the tragic death of Aura...how she actually died. Throughout the book, I wondered about it, but I thought Goldman's method was perfect since it kept me held close to the story, compelled to know the details of their relationship, drawn into his personal voyage through crisis, loss and grief to the apex of his life's worst nightmare. I respected his handling of her death.
I'm not sure if it was cathartic for Mr. Goldman to write his book or if it simply worked as a chronicle and a memorial. I found no real resolution for him except that he seems to feel he's done all in this life he can do for Aura that would matter to her (that is my sense at the end of the book). I believe in that resolution. There comes a time when that's all we who are left behind can do...that and speak their names, continue to miss them and never forget. And, with time and working through our grief as Mr. Goldman does, we come to understand our loved ones better and to accept them for who they really were. We are never the same, however.
There are so many beautiful passages and so many grief-stricken passages in this wonderful book, I feel inadequate to describe it to you in full. I must ask you to try it for yourself.
I wish I had more than 5 stars to give "Say Her Name"...I wish I could give it to everyone who has lost a loved one. I wish you'd get a copy and enjoy it for the next several days. It's a magnificient book.
Please, for Mr. Goldman's sake...just "Say Her Name," it's AURA.
Deborah/TheBookishDame
Francisco Goldman is positively a man familiar with the agonies of grief. He knows the living death of grief. He knows the impossiblities of having to go on living after the death of the one person who makes life worth living. And, he is the most gorgeous and generous of tellers of that experience I have ever known to be alive in my time. He's a writer of the most profound gifts to share.
"Say Her Name" is a magnificent tribute to Goldman's love, Aura, his precious young wife of only 4 years. Her life affected him in such a way as to brand his heart and soul eternally, and he shows that in an eloquence of language and writing that is timeless, heart-wrenching, and a memorial of their relationship.
I was simply spellbound by his story and his prose. Although this book is non-fiction, you will be instantly gripped by the love story and the angst of it. It is a book that haunts you.
Descriptively, Goldman is a master writer. Let me quote him as he speaks of loss and desolution here:
"Every day a ghostly ruin. Every day the ruin of the day that was supposed to have been. Every second on the clock clicking forward, anything I do or see or think, all of it made of ashes and charred shards, the ruins of the future. The life we were going to live, the years we were going to spend together, it was as if that life had already occurred millennia ago, in a lost secret city deep in the jungle, now crumbled into ruins, overgrown, its inhabitants extinguished, never discovered, their story never told by any human being outside it--a lost city with a lost name that only I remember--"
What touched me at a level of wonder and anger, actually, was that in the telling of his relationship with his wife, Aura, I saw Mr. Goldman's self-effacing and self-sacrificing love; while Aura's was more narcissistic and selfish. Although Francisco gave her his all in love, she was often "ashamed" of him, hiding him away from her college peers, "made jokes" about his age and how ugly he was; i.e., he was easily 30 yrs. older, and manipulated him into all sorts of things. Goldman shares these qualities openly and without rancour as a part of who Aura was and what their relationship was like; but, as a reader, I was struck by how insensitive she was to him in return of his obvious devotion to her. Was he was aware of this as he wrote the book? I doubt it. I believe he was only telling the parts about her that he remembered and wanted to preserve. I don't mean to say that Aura didn't love Francisco, she seemed to, of course, and they had a beautiful relationship, but his love was more profound, I think. Aura was a young woman intent on being a writer and she had determination to that end.
Francisco considers even Aura's flaws precious and enduringly "her," in essence. At one point he describes her not wanting to wear her wedding ring because she was embarrassed, and he understood, even wondering if she'd lost it all together since it was so often off her finger. He had paid a small fortune for the ring, but in his mind he tells that it would have been fine with him if she'd lost the ring (the price of a car!) because "just that she'd accepted it to say they were married at one time" was enough for him. And, he'd buy her another if she wanted it. I found that wholly shocking in the selflessness of love. But, in that he said it the way he said it made it resonate with truth for me. He loved Aura profoundly, more than he loved himself.
This is a book that plumbs the depths of love and despair. It is so heartachingly written that it sometimes overwhelms the text itself; I was struck silent in reading as my mind stopped to comprehend the depth of the personal secrets he shares.
This paragraph describes the joy and excitement of love better than any I've read in recent years...the visual, the spiritual, the psychological, the senses, the joy:
"...I slipped into the shop and bought a necklace that Aura had seemed to like. That's how I was, buying her presents, an overjoyed spendthrift piling up credit card debt with squirrelly endeavor. Overcoming that mysterious three-day crisis had strengthened our love--our mystical wedding...just two weeks away. I took a picture of Aura, in sleeveless black shirt, standing on the balcony outside our room in the late afternoon, a hazy blue mountain backdrop, her cheeks and nose flushed, a bashful smile and tilt to her head, a soft vulnerable shine to her eyes, all of this making her look even younger, startlingly and preposterously younger, like an enamored, just-ravished quinceanera, I recognize with some disbelief every time I look at that photograph. As evening fell, the mountainside grew so feverishly alive with sparkling and moving lights it was like a shaken-up snow globe, and a faint electric noisiness filled the air, as if coming from insect-sized motors and music boxes floating across the valley. We sat on the balcony, drinking wine. I pulled the necklace from my pocket."
It is not until the end of the book that we learn of the tragic death of Aura...how she actually died. Throughout the book, I wondered about it, but I thought Goldman's method was perfect since it kept me held close to the story, compelled to know the details of their relationship, drawn into his personal voyage through crisis, loss and grief to the apex of his life's worst nightmare. I respected his handling of her death.
I'm not sure if it was cathartic for Mr. Goldman to write his book or if it simply worked as a chronicle and a memorial. I found no real resolution for him except that he seems to feel he's done all in this life he can do for Aura that would matter to her (that is my sense at the end of the book). I believe in that resolution. There comes a time when that's all we who are left behind can do...that and speak their names, continue to miss them and never forget. And, with time and working through our grief as Mr. Goldman does, we come to understand our loved ones better and to accept them for who they really were. We are never the same, however.
There are so many beautiful passages and so many grief-stricken passages in this wonderful book, I feel inadequate to describe it to you in full. I must ask you to try it for yourself.
I wish I had more than 5 stars to give "Say Her Name"...I wish I could give it to everyone who has lost a loved one. I wish you'd get a copy and enjoy it for the next several days. It's a magnificient book.
Please, for Mr. Goldman's sake...just "Say Her Name," it's AURA.
Deborah/TheBookishDame
October 22, 2023
I'm not sure why Goldman isn't an author I've been aware of, or read until now, and I'm not even sure how I came to this passionate and compelling book, but I'm so glad that I did. How does one understand a tragedy, an unexpected love cut short by an unexpected death? In this time-traveling book that beats with a hard pulse, Goldman unfurls his unexpected love with much-younger Aura Estrada, and her love for him, their short marriage, their lives apart and together, their mysterious inner lives as well, their upbringings and more, and centers the before and the aftermath of tragedy, grief, and emotions. Who is responsible for what was an act of nature, and impulsiveness, for being there, in that place, at the precise moment where the act of nature happens. Richly constructed, lives richly lived, love that was real and too brief. I'm eager to read his other novels now.
January 9, 2012
Really, Goodreads, an average of 3.64 stars for this book? Have you no heart? Have you no compassion? But more importantly, have you no appreciation for a stirring technically-complex piece of writing? I apologize for lashing out at a nameless horde of readers and star-givers; I suppose that's an alienating way to begin a review. But I have this obnoxious quality that kicks in when I really admire a book. I just want to defend it against any possible attack! I want to pat it on the back and tell it to keep being it's awesome self no matter what some may say. Say Her Name is one of those books.
Technically, it's a novel, but read any interview with Goldman and he'll readily admit that nearly all of the main narrative is based on life events, and specifically, the untimely death of his true love, Aura Estrada. He said in one such interview that he didn't want to call it a memoir because he doesn't trust his memories of the way everything actually happened. He was too fraught with grief, guilt, and even possible delusion. Of course, memory is always fallible, and memoir is always subjective, but Goldman wanted to take extra precaution, and, I'd like to imagine, extra liberty with this story. So he turned to fiction. The result is not only a heartbreaking love story, and a painfully honest story of grief, it's a powerful search for the truth of an event through language and causality.
And Goldman tries everything to arrive at that elusive truth. He tells. He shows. He gives us excerpts from Aura's diaries and short stories. He writes close to her point of view as a child. He even writes close to her mother's point of view. He studies the science of waves (his wife's killer; this is revealed early). He deconstructs linear time. He writes short chapters. He writes long chapters. He speaks directly to Aura and to the reader. He tries with all his might to understand how and why this could have happened, and what he is supposed to do in its aftermath. And all of this formal experimentation does not distract from the story. Somehow it makes the content even more raw and visceral.
Mostly, this is because of Goldman's candor. He is not afraid to show the ugly side of his grieving, and to expose us to his anger and self-hatred along with his wondrous capacity for empathy and humor. His drinking, his promiscuity, his naked fear and animosity toward Aura's mother (who has blamed him for his daughter's death), is all on the page. And contrasted with the love story at the book's heart, it provides an unadulterated look at the way loss can turn everything upside-down.
So maybe, Say Her Name, my five stars will push you ever close to 3.65 or, dare I say it, 3.66. Either way, this book deserves to be read widely. It's not just a memorial, a memoiristic fiction, or fictiony memoir. It is a deeply-affecting piece of writing about something both specific and universal.
Technically, it's a novel, but read any interview with Goldman and he'll readily admit that nearly all of the main narrative is based on life events, and specifically, the untimely death of his true love, Aura Estrada. He said in one such interview that he didn't want to call it a memoir because he doesn't trust his memories of the way everything actually happened. He was too fraught with grief, guilt, and even possible delusion. Of course, memory is always fallible, and memoir is always subjective, but Goldman wanted to take extra precaution, and, I'd like to imagine, extra liberty with this story. So he turned to fiction. The result is not only a heartbreaking love story, and a painfully honest story of grief, it's a powerful search for the truth of an event through language and causality.
And Goldman tries everything to arrive at that elusive truth. He tells. He shows. He gives us excerpts from Aura's diaries and short stories. He writes close to her point of view as a child. He even writes close to her mother's point of view. He studies the science of waves (his wife's killer; this is revealed early). He deconstructs linear time. He writes short chapters. He writes long chapters. He speaks directly to Aura and to the reader. He tries with all his might to understand how and why this could have happened, and what he is supposed to do in its aftermath. And all of this formal experimentation does not distract from the story. Somehow it makes the content even more raw and visceral.
Mostly, this is because of Goldman's candor. He is not afraid to show the ugly side of his grieving, and to expose us to his anger and self-hatred along with his wondrous capacity for empathy and humor. His drinking, his promiscuity, his naked fear and animosity toward Aura's mother (who has blamed him for his daughter's death), is all on the page. And contrasted with the love story at the book's heart, it provides an unadulterated look at the way loss can turn everything upside-down.
So maybe, Say Her Name, my five stars will push you ever close to 3.65 or, dare I say it, 3.66. Either way, this book deserves to be read widely. It's not just a memorial, a memoiristic fiction, or fictiony memoir. It is a deeply-affecting piece of writing about something both specific and universal.
April 26, 2019
It’s rare that I set aside an afternoon to finish a book because I can’t get on with my life until I’ve completed it. This is that rare book.
I was already familiar with Francisco Goldman’s work—his first novel and his pieces in the New Yorker. I picked up Say Her Name from a little restaurant book exchange shelf. (It’s marked “uncorrected proof” so it may have some differences from the final published book.)
It didn’t take long before I was pulled into the world of love and grief that is the center of Say Her Name. We know from the beginning that Aura dies, so it was not suspense that pulled me in and kept me reading. It was the characters themselves: the depth of the love, passion, and pain.
In an interview published in the Paris Review, Goldman says “I made things up in order to be able to tell the truth.” Though it is an autobiographical novel, it is also an honest and beautiful tribute to Aura and their love.
I was already familiar with Francisco Goldman’s work—his first novel and his pieces in the New Yorker. I picked up Say Her Name from a little restaurant book exchange shelf. (It’s marked “uncorrected proof” so it may have some differences from the final published book.)
It didn’t take long before I was pulled into the world of love and grief that is the center of Say Her Name. We know from the beginning that Aura dies, so it was not suspense that pulled me in and kept me reading. It was the characters themselves: the depth of the love, passion, and pain.
In an interview published in the Paris Review, Goldman says “I made things up in order to be able to tell the truth.” Though it is an autobiographical novel, it is also an honest and beautiful tribute to Aura and their love.
September 4, 2019
Kan je iemand laten voelen waarom je iemand graag ziet? Kan je iemand laten lezen waarom je iemand mist? Het eerste lukt Goldman niet. Hij wil te veel en daarom verliest het gevoel. In het tweede slaagt hij nipt. Misschien wil hij te weinig en verliest Goldman daardoor het gemis. Wat wint is het krampachtig vasthouden aan wat reeds verloren is. Aura Estrada had haar plekje in de Mexicaanse letteren ongetwijfeld verdiend. Veel lezers vinden haar niet zo'n aangenaam persoon en begrijpen lof en leed van de schrijver niet. Het is altijd mis als je niet weet over wie je nu precies schrijven moet.
October 21, 2011
Say Her Name
by Francisco Goldman
I heard about this title on Wisconsin Public Radio and was riveted by the author’s candid as well as incredibly heart-breaking account of his wife’s death in a bodysurfing accident.
In the first few chapters I went back and forth from feeling sorry for this man’s broken heart to thinking; geez buster, things happen, get on with it. Then I began to see the tapestry he so cleverly wove in order to try and understand how one’s destiny could possibly be anticipated. To understand death and where it comes from and to dig for possible signs is the beginning of his quest…
New York Times bestselling author Francisco Goldman thought he’d found his true love in Aura Estrada, an intelligent graduate student in creative writing twenty years his junior. He was smitten.
“…had a kind of magical, like the clairvoyant empathy of a holy child, and I remember thinking that everybody at least now and then should react like that to the world’s murderous horrors.”
Goldman is also an award-winning journalist, he approached his wife’s death, after only two years of marriage, as only a writer can—he wrote. Flowing from the past to the present Goldman pieces together Aura’s life through her diaries, interviews of her many friends as well as studying many of her computer documents. Interestingly, he also studied the science of waves and used this powerful metaphor as almost a separate character; the Villon. A man obsessed with trying to understand; a man driven to keep the memory of his wife as alive as possible. Yet what is this mysterious thing called memory?
“Sometimes it’s like juggling a hundred thousand crystal balls in the air all at once, trying to keep all these memories going. Every time one falls to the floor and shatters into dust, another crevice cracks open inside me.”
A tragic sub-plot Goldman’s broken heart is further burdened with is Aura’s mother suspecting him of murdering her only child. It seemed obvious from the very beginning that this wasn’t the case, but it isn’t until the last 50 pages that the complete truth of what happened on that beach in Mexico is painfully revealed.
Goldman’s anguish over losing the love of his life is a paradox of the truest romance perhaps ever written. He found a true love and in typical romance fashion he lost it. His message to the world is this:
“Hold her tight, if you have her; hold her tight, I thought, that’s my advice to all the living. Breathe her in, put your nose in her hair, breathe her in deeply. Say her name. It will always be her name. Not even death can steal it. Same alive as dead, always. Aura Estrada.”
by Francisco Goldman
I heard about this title on Wisconsin Public Radio and was riveted by the author’s candid as well as incredibly heart-breaking account of his wife’s death in a bodysurfing accident.
In the first few chapters I went back and forth from feeling sorry for this man’s broken heart to thinking; geez buster, things happen, get on with it. Then I began to see the tapestry he so cleverly wove in order to try and understand how one’s destiny could possibly be anticipated. To understand death and where it comes from and to dig for possible signs is the beginning of his quest…
New York Times bestselling author Francisco Goldman thought he’d found his true love in Aura Estrada, an intelligent graduate student in creative writing twenty years his junior. He was smitten.
“…had a kind of magical, like the clairvoyant empathy of a holy child, and I remember thinking that everybody at least now and then should react like that to the world’s murderous horrors.”
Goldman is also an award-winning journalist, he approached his wife’s death, after only two years of marriage, as only a writer can—he wrote. Flowing from the past to the present Goldman pieces together Aura’s life through her diaries, interviews of her many friends as well as studying many of her computer documents. Interestingly, he also studied the science of waves and used this powerful metaphor as almost a separate character; the Villon. A man obsessed with trying to understand; a man driven to keep the memory of his wife as alive as possible. Yet what is this mysterious thing called memory?
“Sometimes it’s like juggling a hundred thousand crystal balls in the air all at once, trying to keep all these memories going. Every time one falls to the floor and shatters into dust, another crevice cracks open inside me.”
A tragic sub-plot Goldman’s broken heart is further burdened with is Aura’s mother suspecting him of murdering her only child. It seemed obvious from the very beginning that this wasn’t the case, but it isn’t until the last 50 pages that the complete truth of what happened on that beach in Mexico is painfully revealed.
Goldman’s anguish over losing the love of his life is a paradox of the truest romance perhaps ever written. He found a true love and in typical romance fashion he lost it. His message to the world is this:
“Hold her tight, if you have her; hold her tight, I thought, that’s my advice to all the living. Breathe her in, put your nose in her hair, breathe her in deeply. Say her name. It will always be her name. Not even death can steal it. Same alive as dead, always. Aura Estrada.”
November 13, 2016
This is the true story of Francisco's courtship and then very brief 2 year marriage to a much younger mexican PhD literature student with aspirations to become a well-known writer, before she dies tragically in a sudden accident. I didn't realize it was a dead-spouse grief book and probably wouldn't have bought it if I'd investigated further. There were some touching moments but otherwise just on and on stories of their time together and how he is dealing or rather not dealing with it and other people who were in her life after the accident - I skimmed very fast the last third of the book.
From another reviewer - who I agree with:
His love for Estrada cannot be argued; it is clear how much she meant to him, how essential she was/is in his life. And if the book were about 150 pages shorter, it could have been perfect, but Goldman wants to recreate her, to make me and you and everyone who reads the book love her as much as he does, and does her a great disservice in the process.
He makes her into an irritating manic pixie dream girl. Goldman wants us to find Estrada’s insecurities over her developing writing career endearing, but I found it hard to connect with the hardships of a woman who not only studies her PhD at Columbia, but starts MFA studies at another institution and gets to flit between Mexico and Brooklyn. Well, poor her. Goldman also wants us to be charmed by her eccentricities, the way she mocks his age, the jeans-under-dress fashion decisions, the Hello Kitty toaster…. perhaps I’m just a soulless asshole [distinct possibility], but the portrait Goldman paints of Estrada seems eerily similar to all the post-grad English majors I’ve ever known, who’ve had their heads pushed completely up their own asses by the isolation of academic life. It’s not anyone I would choose to spend any time with at this stage in my life.
And it’s unfortunate, because Goldman does offer a moving portrayal of his grief, and the difficulty of battling with his mother-in-law on everything from evicting him from an apartment in Mexico, to her withholding Estrada’s remains from Goldman. I was particularly moved by his descriptions of using Aura’s toiletries, his reluctance to use her shampoo, of eroding what’s left behind of her, of his fascination by the grooves her fingers left in her jar of body scrub, these are all truly touching.
From another reviewer - who I agree with:
His love for Estrada cannot be argued; it is clear how much she meant to him, how essential she was/is in his life. And if the book were about 150 pages shorter, it could have been perfect, but Goldman wants to recreate her, to make me and you and everyone who reads the book love her as much as he does, and does her a great disservice in the process.
He makes her into an irritating manic pixie dream girl. Goldman wants us to find Estrada’s insecurities over her developing writing career endearing, but I found it hard to connect with the hardships of a woman who not only studies her PhD at Columbia, but starts MFA studies at another institution and gets to flit between Mexico and Brooklyn. Well, poor her. Goldman also wants us to be charmed by her eccentricities, the way she mocks his age, the jeans-under-dress fashion decisions, the Hello Kitty toaster…. perhaps I’m just a soulless asshole [distinct possibility], but the portrait Goldman paints of Estrada seems eerily similar to all the post-grad English majors I’ve ever known, who’ve had their heads pushed completely up their own asses by the isolation of academic life. It’s not anyone I would choose to spend any time with at this stage in my life.
And it’s unfortunate, because Goldman does offer a moving portrayal of his grief, and the difficulty of battling with his mother-in-law on everything from evicting him from an apartment in Mexico, to her withholding Estrada’s remains from Goldman. I was particularly moved by his descriptions of using Aura’s toiletries, his reluctance to use her shampoo, of eroding what’s left behind of her, of his fascination by the grooves her fingers left in her jar of body scrub, these are all truly touching.
March 21, 2013
Great art is so often (and perhaps so inevitably) born out of suffering and sorrow, and we look to artists to transmute such pain into something that affirms and consoles. Having lost a dear companion of my own recently, I appreciate Goldman's 340-page reminder that our response to loss is maybe first and foremost to eulogize, to narrativize, to preserve in words so as somehow to ward off the loss of detail and the weakening of memory. We want not only to keep our loved ones alive, but also somehow to find a way to make the world know how wonderful that partner, that friend, even that dog, really was. Say Her Name is a flawed, messy, undisciplined book in some respects, but one doesn’t hold it against Goldman because he’s being true to his feelings and to his lost love, Aura Estrada, more than to the dictates of narrative shape. He unceasingly finds himself “descending into memory like Orpheus to bring Aura out alive for a moment,” knowing that these “futile little rites and reenactments” bring both temporary comfort and renewed pain; one thinks of Tennyson’s famous lines from In Memoriam A.H.H., when he wills himself into believing, “I hold it true, whate’er befall; / I feel it, when I sorrow most; / ‘Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all.” Say Her Name is a literary “quivering” (the old practice of recalling the lives of those who have recently departed), an unspooling of a life so as to replay it, all the while balancing the absurd hope that it might somehow end differently with the knowledge that of course it can’t. Aura is vibrant and alive in these pages, and as the book’s concluding moments approach, the reader finds it hard to believe that she can actually die. The account of the accident itself is harrowing and heartrending, but somehow it’s overcome by the bright comet that was her life, and by the residual light of her after-shine. Even if every day is a “ghostly ruin” for Goldman, “every day the ruin of the day that was supposed to have been,” he (and we) are lifted up by “the memory-sensation of Aura laughing inside [him],” arriving unexpectedly, “as if crossing over from the spirit world.” Goldman knows, finally, that he can only “say her name. It will always be her name. Not even death can steal it. Same alive as dead, always. Aura Estrada.”
November 9, 2021
Francisco Goldman's book tribute to his late wife, "Say Her Name", has elicited controversy between the Amazon/USA reviewers as well as between the characters in the book. What I'm going to write will probably cause me to be stoned by both sides!
Goldman's writing is lovely and the part about Aura's death is particularly strong. The problems with this book are the characters, none of whom is particularly likable. Now, I don't need to "like" the characters of a book to find value in it; for instance, Tova Reich's characters in all her novels are just plain base and venal, but I adore her work.
And that's the difference between non-fiction and fiction. In works of fiction, the characters are just that, "fiction". You don't have to worry about running into them on the street and finding them just as odious in the flesh as they are on the page. Non-fiction characters - and that's what, basically Goldman's characters are - ARE real. Some of the minor ones are composites and Goldman makes other, inexplicable, changes, like changing the name of the college he teaches at. The main characters, Goldman, his young wife, her mother, her father, her stepfather, Goldman's parents, etc, I presumed to be real. There's not an example of good mental health among them and many of them act in ways to others that can only be described as "passive-aggressive". Or "aggressive-aggressive", in some cases.
None of that is necessarily bad in a book, if the nuts are at least sometimes presented with a touch of humor. Unfortunately, there's not much humor in this book; it is, after all, a book about a promising young woman's tragic death at an early age and the loving friends and family she's left behind. It shouldn't be funny, that's not appropriate, but somehow, I was finding the family dynamics of this screwy bunch so dreadful that I was laughing while reading. And it wasn't written to be humorous! I'd love to read a psychiatrist's view of these people. Now that would be interesting reading.
I suppose what I'd like to say is that Goldman IS an excellent writer and this book is beautifully written. He's particularly good with flash backs of his and Aura's lives - both separately and together. I just wish I wasn't afraid I'd ever meet some of the characters in a dimly lit alley...
Goldman's writing is lovely and the part about Aura's death is particularly strong. The problems with this book are the characters, none of whom is particularly likable. Now, I don't need to "like" the characters of a book to find value in it; for instance, Tova Reich's characters in all her novels are just plain base and venal, but I adore her work.
And that's the difference between non-fiction and fiction. In works of fiction, the characters are just that, "fiction". You don't have to worry about running into them on the street and finding them just as odious in the flesh as they are on the page. Non-fiction characters - and that's what, basically Goldman's characters are - ARE real. Some of the minor ones are composites and Goldman makes other, inexplicable, changes, like changing the name of the college he teaches at. The main characters, Goldman, his young wife, her mother, her father, her stepfather, Goldman's parents, etc, I presumed to be real. There's not an example of good mental health among them and many of them act in ways to others that can only be described as "passive-aggressive". Or "aggressive-aggressive", in some cases.
None of that is necessarily bad in a book, if the nuts are at least sometimes presented with a touch of humor. Unfortunately, there's not much humor in this book; it is, after all, a book about a promising young woman's tragic death at an early age and the loving friends and family she's left behind. It shouldn't be funny, that's not appropriate, but somehow, I was finding the family dynamics of this screwy bunch so dreadful that I was laughing while reading. And it wasn't written to be humorous! I'd love to read a psychiatrist's view of these people. Now that would be interesting reading.
I suppose what I'd like to say is that Goldman IS an excellent writer and this book is beautifully written. He's particularly good with flash backs of his and Aura's lives - both separately and together. I just wish I wasn't afraid I'd ever meet some of the characters in a dimly lit alley...
September 6, 2013
Let me start from the beginning! I came across a review of an unknown author (to me) by the name of Francisco Goldman who had written about his very short married life to Aura Estrada, who died bodysurfing on holiday in Mexico. The review was full of praise and all in all a very positive review...so much so that it had me adding his book to my wish list! Fast forward a couple of years and I decide to purchase this book even though I find it to be quite long (350pg) for a four year marriage...what could you possibly have to say after only 4 years of marriage that it would take 350pgs...I was worried that it would be repetitive and boring...boy, was I wrong!!!! Goldman is brutally honest, unencumbered with his words of his love for his wife, writes with his heart on his sleeve and every page melted like butter between my page turning fingers. I could not believe what I would have passed up had I not taken the chance of reading this magnificent ode to a love lost. To be able to write this book amidst all his grief, his deep melancholy and sheer hopelessness is a true miracle and a true gift to all of us who read this heart wrenching love story. He writes so beautifully and opens up his world to the world like nothing I have ever come across before. James Frey's "memoir" had the same impact on me until I found out that Oprah and the world had been had. My faith has been restored with Goldman's Say Her Name...this is a book that will forever occupy a piece of my heart and soul, that will be forever tucked away in a little corner of my memory and that I know will forever have an impact on how I must cherish every moment loving the ones that I love...if for nothing else it should be read for that reason...every person that you love is a gift that may be taken away at any moment...and then you must figure out how to still go on and find meaning in every day without that love in your life. OOF!!
July 4, 2012
This book was as amazing as the reviewers claim. I wish it hadn't been quite so hyped. I like to discover something extraordinary like this book without anyone pointing me there, but of course, sometimes the pointing is the reason I actually seek out and read a book. It made me want to recreate the lives of my own lost loves, particularly my little sister Kathy. The grit of the author's relationship with Aura was a big part of my belief in the story. How do I say how the author seduced me? His use of time and the slow revelation of the details of Aura's death were brilliant. He never sugar coats his passion.I imagine this as a movie. And yet, it is too real. Would it be blasphemous to make it a movie? I guess I'd like to see it because it was such a visual and visceral book. I might hate it as a movie, because I now feel as though I've met Aura and Francisco and I wouldn't want anyone else's interpretation. I have such a sense of her loss as a writer. It reminded me at times of the book In the Unlikely Event of a Water Landing by Christopher Noel. It's about his love and loss of another gifted artist, the writer, Brigid Clark, a student at AFS, the school where I teach. Noel's book is about his own journey through grief, perhaps more than it is about Brigid. This is where Goldman is dead on with his writing--he brings Aura to life. The only section where I lost interest became too much about Goldman. That balance is so tricky. And it may just have been the way I had to read the book, stopping for a week while I wrote kids' long, long reports. Anyway--it's five stars in my estimation. Now one of the two best books I've read this year. It will haunt me.
May 11, 2012
Although this book had rave reviews, I just can't make myself agree. The love between Francisco and Aura did improve their lives, however, the destructive, unproductive and narcissistic behavior the author exhibited after the tragedy made it very difficult to sympathize. I expected to have some revelation and uplifting spirit at the end: such as helping others in same or worse situations to enhance others and his own lives.
I wanted to hold my tongue when I got to the book club, but there was no need. Nobody liked this book: we have never so unanimously agreed on one thing during the 11 months that I have been with the club. It was such a bonding experience. Deepa thinks Aura is a spoiled brat. Erin thinks the marriage is not balanced: Francisco orbited his whole life around Aura. It is not the story that is not tragic, however, it is the wallowing and the self-focus that turns off the sympathizing feeling.
On a positive or rather negative note, I got very intrigued about the overwhelming broken marriages around Aura. I did check into divorce rate in Mexico City: it said that 16000 people get married each year, half of them will get divorced within two years. Therefore, the city is proposing to issue 2-year temporary marriage license.
I wanted to hold my tongue when I got to the book club, but there was no need. Nobody liked this book: we have never so unanimously agreed on one thing during the 11 months that I have been with the club. It was such a bonding experience. Deepa thinks Aura is a spoiled brat. Erin thinks the marriage is not balanced: Francisco orbited his whole life around Aura. It is not the story that is not tragic, however, it is the wallowing and the self-focus that turns off the sympathizing feeling.
On a positive or rather negative note, I got very intrigued about the overwhelming broken marriages around Aura. I did check into divorce rate in Mexico City: it said that 16000 people get married each year, half of them will get divorced within two years. Therefore, the city is proposing to issue 2-year temporary marriage license.
March 15, 2015
Elegy, love letter, howl, tribute, Francisco Goldman's "Say Her Name" resurrects Aura, the author's late wife, and makes the reader fall in love with her, too. Not content to keep the book as a paean to love and an honest examination of grief, though, Goldman also delves into responsibilities within a marriage and its extended relationships, the possibility of destiny, and the simultaneous cruelty and beauty of nature's indifference. At first, I was puzzled by Goldman's choice to publish this as fiction, and thought it perhaps a practical choice (in our litigious society) to keep further lawyers at bay. (His in-laws hold him responsible for Aura's death, which he examines with great compassion.) But as I read, a more heartbreaking realization came to me -- this book is a work of fiction because Goldman wants it to be; he still cannot believe that this story is true. Likewise, when Aura's much-foretold death finally arrives in the narrative, the all-knowing reader is similarly shocked and saddened, and intimately understands Goldman's loss. The purpose of this fiction, therefore, keeps her alive, if only within these pages, and with it Goldman has created a moving, vulnerable, unforgettable testament to a life and love that endures.
January 6, 2012
This is a beautifully written novel that captures not only grief but the doubts, recriminations, and questions that follow a tragic, freak accident. The New York Times review mentions the respect the writer has for his wife's inner life and this indeed struck me. It seems that he loves her in a special way that only a fellow artist can, with interest in her writings, thoughts, and artistic inspiration. He even thinks to ask questions of her father and visit a psychiatric facility that fill out stories she was writing. At times, in the middle of the narrative, I felt the book was getting tedious and I was questioning why so many thought this was one of the best books this year. But as I reached the end, the beautiful writing, the uniqueness of the observations, and the reflections of love and loss won me over. What an incredible tribute to what was undoubtably a unique woman but also a work that speaks to everyone who loved someone and has grieved their loss.
April 3, 2011
Beautifully written but I found it to be maddeningly self-indulgent. It took 300 pages to get to the information I was really interested in. I still don't understand marketing this as a novel rather than a memoir.
January 15, 2013
I cannot explain how annoyed I was reading this book. Albeit a true story, it was pathetic.
June 4, 2021
Las vidas mas difíciles de vivir son esas que viven el duelo por un ser querido, y así vive Francisco Goldman. Una escritura hermosa y descriptiva de lo que fue y es ahora su vida.
El problema para mi esta en que las primeras 100 paginas las devore, estaba fascinada y de repente a medida que avanzaba todo lo sentí repetitivo y perdí el interés.
El problema para mi esta en que las primeras 100 paginas las devore, estaba fascinada y de repente a medida que avanzaba todo lo sentí repetitivo y perdí el interés.
August 16, 2011
The author, Francisco Goldman, lost his wife and soul mate tragically at the age of 30. Francisco was much older and madly in love – maybe even somewhat obsessed. This book has been described by Colm Toibin as “A beautiful love story and an extraordinary story of loss.” It is that, but also more – and the “more” sometimes seems downright creepy. Everyone mourns differently, and for some the mourning period lasts longer than for others. But Goldman’s novel (yes, it is his story “novelized” – not sure where his reality begins and ends) makes us believe that he will mourn for the rest of his life. He dwells on the small aspects of loss that become meaningful to the survivor – like the indentations her fingers made in her face cream or visits to places that she enjoyed. These small details are described and fawned over so that Francisco never has to “let her go”, never has to allow her to escape from his memory. “Descending into memory like Orpheus to bring Aura out alive for a moment, that’s the desperate purpose of all these futile little rites and reenactments.”
Whether love or obsession or some combination of the two, Francisco certainly had nothing more than his wife, Aura’s, happiness as his goal in life. Did Aura find him overbearing? Not according to the novel. Though she was a strong, independent woman, she reveled in his attentions and he was excited by her reactions to them. And, like mourning, love is experienced differently by each person. “Love is a religion. You can only believe it when you’ve experienced it.”
Francisco also wondered if he had done enough to prove to Aura his love, to make her happy. This is not an uncommon thought after the death of a loved one. Having experienced this same sort of loss, I found this to be one of the more touching aspects of Francisco’s story. His advice to the living is heartfelt. “Hold her tight, if you have her; hold her tight, I thought, that’s my advice to all the living. Breathe her in, put your nose in her hair, breathe her in deeply. Say her name. It will always be her name. Not even death can steal it. Same alive as dead, always.”
Also accurate, in my opinion, are his self-recriminations. Aura died as the result of an accident on an isolated Mexican beach while she was enjoying body surfing with Francisco. He questions his ability, while in a state of shock, to help her more than he did. He also feels guilty for having encouraged Aura to surf that day. “What did you think about that long night, my love, as you lay there dying, as horribly wounded as any soldier in war, and alone? Did you blame me? Did you think of me with love even once? Did you see or hear or feel me loving you?”
I have mixed feelings about this book. It is beautifully written and certainly a paean to the love shared by Francisco and Aura. It is touching and accurate when describing the feelings of loss and its aftermath. Aura was a poet and novelist, and the use of her own words to revivify her works quite well. Yet there is something over-the-top about his devotion to her that sometimes takes the edge off this love story.
Grade: B+
Whether love or obsession or some combination of the two, Francisco certainly had nothing more than his wife, Aura’s, happiness as his goal in life. Did Aura find him overbearing? Not according to the novel. Though she was a strong, independent woman, she reveled in his attentions and he was excited by her reactions to them. And, like mourning, love is experienced differently by each person. “Love is a religion. You can only believe it when you’ve experienced it.”
Francisco also wondered if he had done enough to prove to Aura his love, to make her happy. This is not an uncommon thought after the death of a loved one. Having experienced this same sort of loss, I found this to be one of the more touching aspects of Francisco’s story. His advice to the living is heartfelt. “Hold her tight, if you have her; hold her tight, I thought, that’s my advice to all the living. Breathe her in, put your nose in her hair, breathe her in deeply. Say her name. It will always be her name. Not even death can steal it. Same alive as dead, always.”
Also accurate, in my opinion, are his self-recriminations. Aura died as the result of an accident on an isolated Mexican beach while she was enjoying body surfing with Francisco. He questions his ability, while in a state of shock, to help her more than he did. He also feels guilty for having encouraged Aura to surf that day. “What did you think about that long night, my love, as you lay there dying, as horribly wounded as any soldier in war, and alone? Did you blame me? Did you think of me with love even once? Did you see or hear or feel me loving you?”
I have mixed feelings about this book. It is beautifully written and certainly a paean to the love shared by Francisco and Aura. It is touching and accurate when describing the feelings of loss and its aftermath. Aura was a poet and novelist, and the use of her own words to revivify her works quite well. Yet there is something over-the-top about his devotion to her that sometimes takes the edge off this love story.
Grade: B+
July 5, 2011
Francisco Goldman fell in love with the much younger Aura, a graduate student from Mexico, studying literature at Columbia University. To his surprise, she agreed to marry him and they lived a very happy life. He recounts their short life together in his fictional memoir Say Her Name.
On vacation in Mexico, Aura has a surfing accident and dies. Goldman is devastated, and his pain is made more unbearable by his mother-in-law who blames him for her daughter's death, and vows that he will pay for what he has done. She implies that there was foul play, and not only does he have to deal with his loss, he has to worry about being arrested for Aura's death.
Goldman's grief is palpable and visceral. He was
"no longer him. No longer a husband. No longer a man who goes to the fish store to buy dinner for himself and his wife. In less than a year I would be no longer a husband than I was a husband."
Not written as a traditional memoir, Goldman tells Aura's story, using her own writings and diaries to do so. Aura is a poet, and this book has a very poetic, almost dreamy feel to it. He delves into her childhood, her close relationship with her mother, and her insecurities. Although we know that Aura dies, she comes to vivid life on the pages of this book. It is a loving tribute from a husband to his wife.
Goldman lays his grief out on the page for all to see, and it is hard to read at times. He cannot bear to pass by the restaurants and other places they used to go to together. He builds a shrine to her in their apartment, complete with her wedding dress hanging on the mirror.
Say Her Name takes the reader on an honest, emotional journey. We get to know Aura so that her death has an effect on us. There is an element of mystery as well; how did Aura die and did her husband have any responsibility?
Aura and Goldman both studied Mexican and South American literature; if I knew more about it, that would have deepened my appreciation of the book even more.
Readers who liked Calvin Trillin's About Alice and Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking will be moved by this story as well.
On vacation in Mexico, Aura has a surfing accident and dies. Goldman is devastated, and his pain is made more unbearable by his mother-in-law who blames him for her daughter's death, and vows that he will pay for what he has done. She implies that there was foul play, and not only does he have to deal with his loss, he has to worry about being arrested for Aura's death.
Goldman's grief is palpable and visceral. He was
"no longer him. No longer a husband. No longer a man who goes to the fish store to buy dinner for himself and his wife. In less than a year I would be no longer a husband than I was a husband."
Not written as a traditional memoir, Goldman tells Aura's story, using her own writings and diaries to do so. Aura is a poet, and this book has a very poetic, almost dreamy feel to it. He delves into her childhood, her close relationship with her mother, and her insecurities. Although we know that Aura dies, she comes to vivid life on the pages of this book. It is a loving tribute from a husband to his wife.
Goldman lays his grief out on the page for all to see, and it is hard to read at times. He cannot bear to pass by the restaurants and other places they used to go to together. He builds a shrine to her in their apartment, complete with her wedding dress hanging on the mirror.
Say Her Name takes the reader on an honest, emotional journey. We get to know Aura so that her death has an effect on us. There is an element of mystery as well; how did Aura die and did her husband have any responsibility?
Aura and Goldman both studied Mexican and South American literature; if I knew more about it, that would have deepened my appreciation of the book even more.
Readers who liked Calvin Trillin's About Alice and Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking will be moved by this story as well.
June 21, 2016
Audio book narrated by Robert Fass
2.5**
Goldman found the love of his life in a decades younger grad student (not his student) from Mexico. He gave his heart to the brilliant, witty, exuberant Aura, and they were looking forward to starting a family when she was tragically killed during a beach holiday. This unexpected tragedy affected Francisco and Aura’s mother in ways no one expected. Francisco was completely bereft and lost in his grief. Eventually he wrote this “novel” – a barely fictionalized story of Aura and of their love.
I had such high hopes for this book. Everything I had read about it and what I was told by others who had read it (and whose opinion I trust) led me to believe this would be a wonderful testament to an enduring love that ended tragically. I was able to go hear the author speak when he was on the book tour, and was touched by his sincerity and emotion.
So what went wrong for me with this book? At first I thought it was the fault of the narrator. Fass does not have the right voice for this book. His tone is not “round” enough to tell the story of the Mexican Aura Estrada. Yes, I know the narrator of the book is Francisco, who was born and raised in the United States, but I’d heard the author read excerpts from the book, and Fass doesn’t sound like what I remembered Goldman sounding like. Still, I really do not think I can blame Fass and the audio version for my lackluster reaction. I have the text as well, and looking through it, reading sections on my own … I just don’t find the “heart” I was expecting.
I will say that the section where Goldman relates that final day at the beach is absolutely riveting. My heart breaks for Aura and Francisco, and all their friends and family, even for the “bystanders” who witnessed the events and tried to help, or shied away in horror. I wish the immediacy and emotion of these chapters had been present earlier and throughout the book.
2.5**
Goldman found the love of his life in a decades younger grad student (not his student) from Mexico. He gave his heart to the brilliant, witty, exuberant Aura, and they were looking forward to starting a family when she was tragically killed during a beach holiday. This unexpected tragedy affected Francisco and Aura’s mother in ways no one expected. Francisco was completely bereft and lost in his grief. Eventually he wrote this “novel” – a barely fictionalized story of Aura and of their love.
I had such high hopes for this book. Everything I had read about it and what I was told by others who had read it (and whose opinion I trust) led me to believe this would be a wonderful testament to an enduring love that ended tragically. I was able to go hear the author speak when he was on the book tour, and was touched by his sincerity and emotion.
So what went wrong for me with this book? At first I thought it was the fault of the narrator. Fass does not have the right voice for this book. His tone is not “round” enough to tell the story of the Mexican Aura Estrada. Yes, I know the narrator of the book is Francisco, who was born and raised in the United States, but I’d heard the author read excerpts from the book, and Fass doesn’t sound like what I remembered Goldman sounding like. Still, I really do not think I can blame Fass and the audio version for my lackluster reaction. I have the text as well, and looking through it, reading sections on my own … I just don’t find the “heart” I was expecting.
I will say that the section where Goldman relates that final day at the beach is absolutely riveting. My heart breaks for Aura and Francisco, and all their friends and family, even for the “bystanders” who witnessed the events and tried to help, or shied away in horror. I wish the immediacy and emotion of these chapters had been present earlier and throughout the book.
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