Say Her Name

Say Her Name

by Francisco Goldman (Author)

Synopsis

Celebrated novelist Francisco Goldman married a beautiful young writer named Aura Estrada in a romantic Mexican hacienda in the summer of 2005. The month before their second anniversary, during a long-awaited holiday, Aura broke her neck while body surfing. Francisco, blamed for Aura's death by her family and blaming himself, wanted to die, too. But instead he wrote Say Her Name, a novel chronicling his great love and unspeakable loss, tracking the stages of grief when pure love gives way to bottomless pain. Suddenly a widower, Goldman collects everything he can about his wife, hungry to keep Aura alive with every memory. From her childhood and university days in Mexico City with her fiercely devoted mother to her studies at Columbia University, through their newlywed years in New York City and travels to Mexico and Europe - and always through the prism of her gifted writings-Goldman seeks her essence and grieves her loss. Humour leavens the pain as he lives through the madness of utter grief and creates a living portrait of a love as joyous and playful as it is deep and profound. Say Her Name is a love story, a bold inquiry into destiny and accountability, and a tribute to Aura - who she was and who she would have been.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 368
Edition: Main
Publisher: Grove Press / Atlantic Monthly Press
Published: 01 Apr 2012

ISBN 10: 1611855942
ISBN 13: 9781611855944
Book Overview: In the summer of 2007, Francisco Goldman's young wife Aura died suddenly on a beach in Mexico. Say Her Name is the novel born out of this personal tragedy-an extraordinary tale that weighs the unexpected gift of love against the blinding grief of loss.

Media Reviews
Winner of the Prix Femina Etranger A Best Book of the Year: New York Times Notable New York magazine Entertainment WeeklyBoston Globe Pittsburgh Post-Gazette Publishers Weekly Barnes and Noble The Guardian The Globe and Mail The Daily Telegraph The Independent Sunday Herald The Herald (Glasgow) The Daily Mail Shelf Awareness Quietly devastating . . . Powerful . . . As the story builds--inevitably, unbearably--toward Aura's last day, Goldman has so convincingly brought her to life that her death still somehow comes as a shock. . . . Goldman's beautifully written, deeply felt ode to his wife . . . lets you meet this unusual woman through Goldman's lovestruck gaze, and you can't help falling for her a little too. Even after the book ends, the sting of Aura's absence lingers. -- Entertainment Weekly (A-) A masterpiece of storytelling and scene-setting. --Colm Toibin, The Guardian (Best Books of 2011) Goldman's searing novel Say Her Name is for me the book of the year. . . . A soaring paean to a brilliant young woman and to the infinite invincible power of love. --Junot Diaz, New York (Favorite Books of the Year) Passionate and moving . . . Beautifully written... the truth that emerges in this book has less to do with the mystery of [Aura's] death . . . than with the miracle of the astonishing, spirited, deeply original young woman Goldman so adored....So remarkable is this resurrection that at times I felt the book itself had a pulse. -- The New York Times Book Review To call Francisco Goldman's book about the death of his young Mexican wife an elegy hardly represents it. Lament is closer, but insufficient. It is a chain of eruptions, a meteor shower; not just telling but bombarding us in a loss that glitters. With the power and fine temper of its writing, it is as much poem as prose. . . . Tense set pieces, respectively heartbreaking and ch
Author Bio
Francisco Goldman is the author of three novels: The Long Night of White Chickens which was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award; The Ordinary Seaman, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and The Divine Husband. His non-fiction work The Art of Political Murder: Who killed the Bishop? was a Best Book of the Year for The Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post and The Economist in 2007. Goldman has been a contributing editor for Harper's magazine and his fiction, journalism and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Esquire and The New York Times Magazine.