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A review by pepper1133
Say Her Name by Francisco Goldman
1.0
"Life is too short to waste finishing a crappy book." So said my senior year English teacher, Ms. Getz. I admit that I am guilty of sticking with a book far, far longer than I should in the hopes that it will somehow miraculously turn itself around. Rarely is that the case, however. I realized I had to give up the ghost of this book after reading another Goodreads reviewer's post on the book, saying that he had basically slogged through the last half of the book, just waiting for Aura to die. I was in the same boat. So I found the New Yorker story "The Wave," which Goldman had written as a very shortened version of the book, got the conclusion I needed as to the details of Aura's death, and finally closed the covers of the book itself.
I'm not giving anything away in telling you that Aura dies; the whole point of the book is that this is the "novelized recollection" of Goldman's mourning over the death of his wife. Her death itself is shrouded somewhat in misery and we only get the bare bones of details throughout most of it, although we are given to wonder exactly what happened because we know Aura's family feels he murdered her.
The book jumps around a great deal, and it's hard to keep the chronology straight. Also, and god I feel bad saying this about a dead woman, but after awhile, I really started to dislike her. And then there's the significant "ick" factor of their age difference, as well the fact that it becomes very clear that both before and after Aura, he had/has a significant fetishization of young Mexican women. It just seemed like exploitation that this successful, older white male writer continued to enter into sexual relationships with emerging, young Mexican female writers/artists. Over and over and over. The postcolonial issues are rampant here.
If Goldman's story of Aura interests you, I highly suggest you just read "The Wave" instead.
I'm not giving anything away in telling you that Aura dies; the whole point of the book is that this is the "novelized recollection" of Goldman's mourning over the death of his wife. Her death itself is shrouded somewhat in misery and we only get the bare bones of details throughout most of it, although we are given to wonder exactly what happened because we know Aura's family feels he murdered her.
The book jumps around a great deal, and it's hard to keep the chronology straight. Also, and god I feel bad saying this about a dead woman, but after awhile, I really started to dislike her. And then there's the significant "ick" factor of their age difference, as well the fact that it becomes very clear that both before and after Aura, he had/has a significant fetishization of young Mexican women. It just seemed like exploitation that this successful, older white male writer continued to enter into sexual relationships with emerging, young Mexican female writers/artists. Over and over and over. The postcolonial issues are rampant here.
If Goldman's story of Aura interests you, I highly suggest you just read "The Wave" instead.