Reviews

Say Her Name, by Francisco Goldman

josie8's review against another edition

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3.0

I had mixed feelings about this one and ended up not finishing it, as I was craving lighter fun fare for the holiday. It was well written, as one would expect from a frequent New Yorker contributor, and the author thoroughly convinced me that he valued and appreciated all the intelligent quirkiness and love of his wife. I was not as entranced by her, so after reading through about 200 pages I skipped through to the end to find out about the accident that took her life and called it a day.

marianne2001's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

jraley_writes's review against another edition

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2.0

I had hope for this book. The beginning wasn't so bad and I appreciated the structure of his stories and chapters...yet I thought it would pick up and it never did! I wasn't expecting some huge drama considering it's an entire book about grief, life, and death but we don't officially find out what happens until there are only 25 pages left?! I also didn't really connect with any characters but I could (somewhat) understand Frank's personal tug of war. I enjoyed how he wrote but was just bored and had to struggle to finish after about half way through.

melloves2read's review against another edition

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4.0

I would have given this a 4.5 if possible. Through his descriptions of his wife Aura and the stories he tells you can feel how much the author loved her. You wish you had known her. His grief is painful to read yet you want to find out more about Aura and their life together.

pepper1133's review against another edition

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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.

ehersheyiv's review against another edition

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4.0

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.

suzze's review against another edition

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3.0

Francisco Goldman's "novel" will stay with me for a long time. Such beautiful language, such heart-felt emotions. As I was reading it, I wasn't sure how much I liked it, as it seemed too "high-brow" for me, with two brilliant writers, fluent in several languages, living in two countries, dropping names of professors and authors that I have never heard of. But the crux of the book was Francisco's relationship with his wife, Aura, and a celebration of her life, even as he grieves her tragic death. Haunting.

debumere's review against another edition

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5.0

I read about this book years ago in a Sunday newspaper literary section and spent a lot of time after that trying to find it by typing in related words in the google search box when I couldn't remember the title or the author.

Finally my hard work paid off and I got it out of the library.

Very well written, captivating and tragic.

laurafinazzo's review against another edition

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4.0

Francisco Goldman’s novel Say Her Name seems to be all the rage right now. I randomly came across a recommendation somewhere or other, and then proceeded to find brilliant reviews for the novel everywhere I looked on the internet. It wasn’t too long after I delved in that I figured out what all the fuss was about.

The narrative is reminiscent (to me at least) of that of Carolyn Parkhurst’s The Dogs of Babel. A man loses his wife and, while dealing with the tumultuous pain of his loss, he revisits (and maybe even romanticizes) the relationship they shared. The late wife in both cases is a bit more tortured than we first realize, but is always a compellingly vivacious character.

Goldman pulls us right into the throes of his sorrow as he reveals the tragic fact that his young wife, Aura, died in a drowning accident of some sort in her native country, Mexico. She was a graduate student at Columbia living with her husband in Brooklyn, and a vacation with friends took them down to Mexico. He recounts Aura’s lifestory in fairly chronological form up until her death. Throughout, he intersperses memories of his four years with Aura as well as the aftermath of her demise even though we remain fuzzy on the exact details of his wife’s last hours until the book’s last pages. This little structural detail really serves to keep you constantly feeling for Francisco; it is almost as though recounting Aura’s death is a truly insurmountable task, one that can only be completed once the other facts of their lives have been fully exhausted.

Intelligently written, Say Her Name is a beautiful manifestation of Francisco’s love for Aura as well as a tale of loss. Though the loss of his wife is the central thread of Goldman’s story, his all-encompassing awe for and devotion to Aura is what will most stain reader’s minds. Maybe it’s just because I’m a bit of a romantic and a huge sucker for stories told by the love-struck male who paints the object of his affection in the rosiest of love’s shades. Or maybe it’s because Goldman’s novel stands as one of the greatest acts of love that an individual could ever commit for someone else. Aura is immortalized in Say Her Name; her earliest dark adolescent thoughts, recorded in treasured diaries, the torturous secrets and insecurities shared with her husband, the gorgeous fragments of writing which she fervently dreamed of one day seeing bound in a published book are all threaded into this eulogy of a novel. We are introduced to Aura through Francisco’s narrative eyes, but a whole lot of authentic Aura finds its way into the story too.

Say Her Name has more depth than almost any other novel of love and loss I’ve yet come across. I’d attribute this both to Goldman’s intellectual roots but also to the fact that this story is so very steeped in his very real experience. Francisco documented his love for Aura the way he knew best. Though a novel alone cannot lessen the sorrow of losing one’s wife, writing such a strikingly real portrait of Aura allows her presence to permeate every corner of Goldman’s life. Though this in itself isn’t a major change from the way Francisco experinenced the initial shock of losing Aura, her spiritual presence begins to enhance and even brighten Francisco’s world, rather than fill him with an overwhelming degree of sorrow.

After Aura’s death, Francisco speaks with Ana Eva, a waitress at a restaurant the couple used to frequent. He shares with her a line from “Exequy on his Wife” a poem by Henry King, Bishop of Chichester that reads “ev’ry Howre a step towards thee.” For Francisco, this excerpt encompasses the whole state of emotions through which he is dealing. He goes on to explain that “this is why we need beauty, to illuminate even what has most broken us… [not] to help us transcend or transform it into something else, but first and foremost to help us see it.” This rationalization of beauty helps explain the importance of this particular piece of poetry to Francisco, but also is essential in gaining an understanding of why he wrote Say Her Name.

The novel is at times raw and painful, at others romanticized and lovely. But it is always undeniably real and authentic. Say Her Name is a harrowingly true story that touches at the heartstrings, for its profundity of love and depth of sadness are unquestionably, gut-wrenchingly sincere.

amysbrittain's review against another edition

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The back story of the author's life events is tragic and compelling, but the writing and tone of the story didn't jibe with me or feel real. Didn't finish.