Francisco GoldmanRecensioni

During a five-day visit to his hometown of Boston, a writer attempts to fit together the pieces of his own past, his mother's, and that of her native Guatemala."
Nice quick summary of this Pulitzer Prize finalist by Francisco Goldberg, whose narrator in this very autobiographical is Frank Goldberg .
Frank is returning to Boston to see his mother and possibly his sister, but the five day trip will connect him to all his memories of a childhood filled with parental beatings and school bullies. It also recalls the loves of his life and the possibility of a new relationship. Time is pretty fluid in the narrative as Frank using a simple skipped line to change from current time to his journalistic career in South America, where his expose of the governmental murder of a bishop ( true story) has prompted his to escape from retaliation. Incidents from history, like the CIA's overthrow of the Guatemalan government to the benefit of the American banana company, make for some fascinating reading, as do Goldberg's natural storytelling abilities. "He was plunging into what was fast becoming one of the era’s darkest proxy wars, a horrific conflict that was first sparked in the 1950s by the United States’ covert removal of Guatemala’s left-wing president, Jacobo Árbenz, and that over the ensuing decades claimed the lives of 200,000 people, displaced a million more, and unleashed the guns and gangs that rule the country now.(New York review)"
I'm glad I picked up this novel-It's not quite Juno Diaz, but comparable. I would recommend this and will look to explore some of his other works.

Lines
It was all so different with Gisela, who possessed what Mexicans call morbo, a moody sultriness like human opium.

I’m mesmerized by the extraordinary hues and texture of Lulú’s hair, a dark rich buffalo-pelt brown with faint coppery shadings, a whirly wild complexity like a Jackson Pollock painting but one in only those colors.

Proust wrote in his novel that a man, during the second half of his life, might become the reverse of who he was in the first.

my father shoving me down onto the floor with hand clamped around the back of my neck, my mother chirping: Bert! Bert! Not in the head! Don’t hit him in the head! It happened so often, all the different times blend into one long memory like the loud blur of a fast train passing on the opposite track.

I met Gisela at a party within days of having moved to Mexico City. A love-at-first-sight thing, like I’d been torn open, gutted, and refilled with pure yearning I could hardly bear.Her Picasso harlequin girl expressiveness, the straight line between her lips that when bent downwards at the corners and pulling her face down with it could make her look so tragic and so childishly gleeful when stretched out, deepening her dimples. Her jittery overcaffeinated Audrey Hepburn lissomness and poise. Her rich-girl-gone-wrong haughty moodiness.

Father Doyle was baroquely bulky, with a ruler-straight part in his thin brown hair, narrow eyes that looked scribbled in with a pencil, a long sloping nose, lips like jelly candy.

That was one historically literate cop, though, to make that connection between my mother’s country and the originally Boston-based fruit company that gave birth to Chiquita and helped bring years of military dictatorship and slaughter to her country.

As I watched her leaning over my cast, listening to the squeak of her marker against the plaster, a warmth went through me like a wave, one that carried me all the way to that locked room where emotions are stored like bicycles that have never been ridden.

the maw of his navel hanging out over his belt like a screaming Edvard Munch face.

She’s a hydra of explosive nerves; the key to being with her is learning how to avoid lighting those fuses.

Abuelas de la Plaza de Mayo and their search for the children of their own disappeared sons and daughters. Most of those young mothers were already pregnant when they were abducted; some were impregnated in the Argentine military’s clandestine prisons, mostly by jailors and torturers who raped them. Born in the secret birthing wards of military hospitals, weaned after a few days from mothers who would soon be put aboard death flights, those stolen infants were almost never, as they grew up, told the truth about their origins by their adoptive parents. So far, nearly a hundred of those offspring have been found and united with their grandmothers.½

Until I finished the book and looked at the library cataloguing on the spine, I did not realize it was a novel. It was such a painfully beautiful tribute to the author's wife and his love for her, I was sure it was biography. I can't put it any better than Annie Proulx: "We may feel we know something about love's burn, the scorching heat of loss, but reading this book is to stand in front of a blowtorch, to take a farrier's rasp to raw ends ... Wrenching funny, powerful, beautiful."

A densely packed and wonderful family story of a complex group of people over three generations. The main character (Francisco) comes from a Jewish father and a Guatemalan mother who becomes a writer and he struggles to make sense of his complex background. As a youth he is called Monkey Boy by bullies and eventually overcomes this stigma. He has a complicated abusive father and his kind mother also tries to get past dad's abuse. Grandma and other relatives are major players in the book book set in the United Atates and Guatemala. The novel deserves all of it's plaudets.

Compelling enough, but didn't quite have the bite or the romance of Oscar Wao, for all the similarities. Others may have better luck, though. It may be the story of a troubled relationship with Judaism and ageing parents was a bit close to home for some wintry escapism.

I want to accuse this book of not rising above being a ridiculously sentimental love note to/about a dead wife, and it doesn't, but it doesn't try to. In that definition, it is a success, it is beautiful and it is worth reading. It's sad without being dark. I have to admit it's too depressing for me.

Picked this up because of his interview with NPR, which was interesting. His story seemed to be engaging as he overcame a dysfunctional childhood and an abusive parent. I am also interested in stories of "hybrid" households, of people from very different cultures. But I found the book rambling and self-indulgent and a difficult book with which to stay engaged.½

While I applaud the humility with which the author’s alter ego describes his life, growing up with an angry Russian immigrant for a father and a Guatemalan mother, I could not connect with the story. I tried reading it and then listening to the audio book. The audiobook was well done, but the only thing I left with was an appreciation of his concern about other Central American refugees.

This is a brilliant dissection of a horrible assassination. I am not al all surprised that it has been turned into an HBO movie.

I enjoyed how the author talked about Mexico City neighborhoods and his grief for his wife. I was less compelled by his lengthy reporting on the violence of Mexico's drug trade and the corruption of the country's government. I especially disliked how frequently he described the physical appearance of young women, which make him sound like a creeper. Recommended for any reader with an interest in Mexico.½

4.4 A piercingly real love story told from each side of an accidental death. There is so much life in this book it is unimaginable that it was actually written. Raw, gentle, and thundering. Worth it for the axolotls.

2.75 stars

This is a memoir of the author's relationship with the love of his life, a woman 20+ years younger than he was, and who died only two years after they got married. Her family blamed him for her death.

This was supposed to be some amazing love story, but I didn't get the connection between them, and I didn't particularly like either of them. He jumps all over the place in time, so nothing is chronological, and I don't like multi-page paragraphs, either. There were parts that were interesting, which explains why I didn't give it a lower rating, but also parts that bored me (i.e. I couldn't have cared less about her academic life). Overall, I wasn't impressed

This is a well-written but horrifying book about trying to find who killed Bishop Gerardi in 1998 in Guatemala, upon his publishing of a human rights report naming military and government figures. Six years of investigation reveal Guatemala as an upside down country with skullduggery, bribery, murder, corruption, torture and more at the hands of the civilian government, the military government (in control) and ordinary criminal gangs. The climate of lies, spies, dissembling, contradiction, collusion, half-truth and revenge creates a miasma of a society that feels like hell. Sudden exiles out of the country for safety are common. By supporting the right-wing military, the U.S. contributed to the destabilization of the country, from which it still has not recovered. This is an extreme example of where our country is headed under Trump.

El 26 de abril de 1998, el obispo Juan Gerardi, fue asesinado a golpes. Sólo habían pasado dos días desde que presentara las 1600 páginas del informe que documentaba las sistemáticas violaciones de los derechos humanos cometidas por el ejército de Guatemala en la lucha contra la insurgencia que, formalmente, había terminado en 1996. «El horror con nombre y apellidos», llamaría la prensa local al documento, aludiendo a las más de 50,000 víctimas de la guerra civil que identificaba. Las hipótesis de los investigadores del gobierno, en una investigación que más parecía una farsa, iban desde el crimen pasional entre homosexuales, a una red de traficantes de arte sacro, cuyos robos había descubierto Gerardi. Pero los héroes de este libro son los jóvenes investigadores de la Oficina de Derechos Humanos del Arzobispado que investigaron por su cuenta el asesinato. Su trabajo de detectives condujo a un juicio histórico, y a condenas mucho más convincentes.

El 26 de abril de 1998, el obispo y coordinador de la Oficina de Derechos Humanos del Arzobispado de Guatemala, Juan Gerardi, fue asesinado a golpes en el garaje de la casa parroquial donde vivía. Sólo habían pasado dos días desde la presentación pública, en la Catedral de la ciudad de Guatemala, y por el propio Gerardi, de los cuatro tomos y mil seiscientas páginas del exhaustivo informe que documentaba minuciosamente las sistemáticas violaciones de los derechos humanos cometidas por el ejército de Guatemala en los largos años de lucha contra la insurgencia, al menos formalmente, había terminado en 1996. Bajo el nombre de Guatemala: Nunca Más, el documento era el resultado de un ambicioso proyecto de investigación que había durado tres años, y movilizado a más de seiscientos voluntarios. “El horror con nombre y apellidos”, lo llamaría la prensa local, aludiendo a las más de cincuenta mil víctimas de la guerra que identificaba. / Las primeras hipótesis del gobierno, sobre el asesinado de Gerardi, en una investigación que más parecía una farsa, producto del más negro realismo mágico, iban desde el crimen pasional entre homosexuales, a una red de traficantes de arte sacro dirigida por la glamorosa hija ilegítima de otro prelado, cuyos robos había descubierto Gerardi, o el ataque del perro -artrítico y muy viejo- cuyo dueño era otro sacerdote que vivía en la misma casa. Pero los héroes de este libro, que puede leerse como una sobrecogedora, laberíntica novela policíaca, son “los Intocables”, que era el nombre que se daban en broma a sí mismos un grupo de jóvenes investigadores de la Oficina de Derechos Humanos del Arzobispado que decidieron investigar por su cuenta el asesinato. Y su arriesgado trabajo de detectives, y la acción de fiscales y jueces ajenos a la corrupción endémica en Guatemala, condujeron a un juicio histórico, y a condenas mucho más convincentes. / “Una novela policíaca verdadera, el relato de una conspiración criminal que revela el sustrato tóxico de la política y el poder en la Guatemala contemporánea. Francisco Goldman no sólo ejerce de escritor, y magnífico, sino que también es un detective ético y veraz” (Jon Lee Anderson). / “Una investigación sobre las perversiones de la política, un libro sobrecogedor y surrealista como la vida misma” (Toby Green, The Indepent). / Francisco Goldman nació en 1957 y creció entre Boston y Guatemala. Ha trabajado como periodista político, cubriendo guerras en Centroamérica. En Anagrama se han publicado sus novelas: La larga noche de los pollos blancos, Marinero raso y El esposo divino.

Truth be told, I finished this book some time ago, but it's taken me awhile just to wade through all of the feelings it brought to the surface for me - I don't know that I've been so affected by a book since Atonement, and I honestly don't know if that says more about Francisco Goldman, about the book, or about myself. As with Ian McEwan's Atonement, the narrator has an overwhelming amount of survivor's guilt, though Goldman's approach is significantly more transparent than McEwan's fictional narrator.

I remember reading the New York Times review back in 2011 and feeling so compelled by Goldman's loss - his young wife died tragically only two years into their marriage in what authorities would call a freak accident - that I stopped into the Grand Central Posman Books (now gone) the next day to buy it. I couldn't remember the name of it (a fact which I acknowledge to be incredibly ironic) but I was able to summarize it (no response from the employees) and describe the cover - the guy helping me located the sea-blue hardcover with the shapelessly-draped wedding gown floating beneath the title, and looked at me kind of dubiously as if he either had no idea what I was about, or as if he was judging my choice of book.

Perhaps that's in part because this tremendous story of tragedy doesn't make for a great best-seller, or even a highly-recommended mass market beach read (actually, in the interest of taste, please maybe don't read this at the beach). It feels so much more niche and complex than that - not something the casual reader would or should pick up.

Honestly, I'm not sure I was at a point in my life in 2011 where I could have been prepared for it; now that I'm past 30 and have had my share of loss, I know that I appreciate it more than I could have then.

It's a commitment - truly, I think any memoir or biography or autobiography worth its weight requires more attention than most readers can give, but then I hate to call this novel any of those; it is without question biographical - but the way that Goldman breaks up the tragic tale of his short-lived ardent love and builds it strategically is much more like a fictional novel and, in that aspect, exceeds even McEwan in sparking my emotions. Goldman has even said this is not a memoir - certainly, these events happened, but the telling is him emotionally...not the real him - he cites Faulker to this point: "A novel is a writer's secret self, a dark twin of a man" and so that is how he proceeded with telling his story but also removing himself to a degree and allowing the catharsis to take on a life almost of its own.

By design (I imagine), their story arrives like waves as high tide approaches - you can see them in the distance as they surge and recede back and forth until the reader is completely saturated, drowning in stimuli. The Times reviewer called this oscillation "restless...the pacing of the grief-struck," which is terribly accurate in this case.

Goldman, who does not always present himself (or, shall we say, his fictionalish self) in the best light,

shames himself for his humanity in a way that makes it clear that he is (or, was, at least at the time of writing) still working though his grief. We see the denial, the anger, the bargaining and the depression and it seems, only when he begins to imagine Aura as a spirit in her tree, that he has begun to approach acceptance.

How can one explain death? How can one begin to understand it? And how can we move beyond it? Perhaps we never do or - as Goldman says - perhaps grief is eternal like a person's name - "Say her name. It will always be her name. Not even death can steal it. Same alive as dead, always."

www.theliterarygothamite.com

I think I'd find the protagonist and his lover revolting if I were to meet them in reality, but the story is beautiful and harrowing.

I love his use of Spanish in the English. Very interesting how he maintains Mexico is safe while he describes routine violent crimes, but I see there really are two Mexicos now.

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.
½

Moving from the deeply personal, to the deeply political. I couldn't predict where this was going, and that made me love it.

might also want to read bough down, karen green
http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2013/12/19/karen-greens-bough-down/

Say Her Name by Francisco Goldman is a haunting tale of love and grief. The way that Goldman tells this autobiographical novel draws the reader into his pain making you feel his grief and guilt towards the death of his wife, Aura.

The story takes you through Francisco’s life when he is dating Aura, their marriage, and the year after her death. The love he had for his wife shines through in his writing, making the reader feel so connected with his grief.

The gist of the story is that Francisco marries a much younger Mexican woman, Aura, who is aspiring to be a writer but is getting her PhD at her mother’s request. Goldman takes us through the two short years that they were married, before they go on vacation to the beach for two weeks in Mexico. They spend a lot of time back in Aura’s home country when they are not in New York City. They had been to this beach several times before and the waves were not as dangerous as some of the other Mexican beaches. Near the end of the story you finally learn how she dies at the beach and why Francisco blames himself and his mother-in-law does as well.

I thought this book was so well-written and I would recommend to anyone. I would give this book a 4 out of 5 stars.

Goldman is an author and journalist who divides his time between NYC and Mexico City (District Federal or DF for short). The book is a chronicle or memoir of his life in the DF. His late wife was a Mexican national and writer, and he is still mourning and exploring her loss. The interior circuit refers to the highway loop around the DF. Driving is an immense challenge in the city, and he takes driving lessons in order to master the chaotic traffic. He takes a city map guide and randomly opens it and places his finger on a map; he the drives to that location. The book is very atmospheric and gives you insight as to what it is like to live there. Interestingly, he never mentions the air pollution, which our media seem to emphasize. He does note that contrary to popular belief in the United States, the DF itself is not very dangerous and has a lower crime rate than many US major cities. Outside the DF it is a different matter. As a journalist, he investigates a mass kidnapping from a nightclub, and in the process you learn a lot more about Mexican politics than you can from US media. In short, if want to know more about Mexico itself, this book will serve you well. It is well written, but the peppering of names of Mexican authors activists, politicians and narcos presumes a background knowledge on the readers part that necessitated a lot of googling on my part. Of course that leads to even more enrichment.

This seems to have been a love which was meant to be, and the two of them true and devoted to each other. Accidents happen, tragic accidents happen too, and end something before its time, without the reason, and forever. Francisco Goldman goes through all the details of the time he was able to spend with Aura before she died. Surely it is a much more purposeful way for him to deal with this tragedy than killing himself would have been, and there are many interesting details, but I still found it difficult to read at times, because of its private nature, because of the many details he writes about, not only about Aura, but other people in his life. I certainly hope he has managed to re solve at least some of the issues that have made him decide write the book in the first place.

Francisco Goldman's story of his wife Aura and her tragic death. Very sad, sometimes difficult to read.

This was one of those books I wish I could have rated with a 4.5 - it wasn't quite a five star for me, simply because it took me 100 pages to really feel involved with the story. Partly that was because the confusion between memoir and novel, what was real and what was fiction, kept interrupting my involvement in the story. Goldman's prose was magical, so I kept reading, and eventually I didn't care what was "real" - since it all felt so real and vital.

I took this book with me to read in Mexico, not knowing that much of the story was set in Guanajuato and San Miguel de Allende, where I was staying. What a delicious coincidence that was.

Despite being a slow start, this is a heartbreaking yet inspiring story, beautifully told. Read it.

This book details the murder of Bishop Gerardi, a Guatemalan prelate killed in 1998, and the investigation into it as well as the trials resulting from the investigation. It offers the killing of Bishop Gerardi as a paradigmatic politically motivated murder, an extrajudicial execution as ordered and carried out by the Guatemalan military with at least the acquiescence of the highest civilian authorities. It is an engrossing read, and one which illuminates much of violence in Central America, past and present.