Say Her Name

SAY HER NAME is a beautifully written and beautifully narrated autobiographical novel of love, tragedy, and grief. Francisco Goldman met Aura Estrada when he was 47 and she was 25. He was a successful novelist, and she was a Ph.D. student and emerging writer. Only two years into their marriage, Aura was killed in a freak bodysurfing accident on a Mexican beach. Narrator Robert Fass has an appealing soft tone, impeccable timing, and an enviable ease switching between English and Mexican Spanish. Even more important is his sensitive rendering of Goldman's emotions--from infinite gratitude and awe at meeting and loving Aura to shocking, soul-crushing guilt and loss following her death. It's a stunning production that allows Aura to live on. A.B. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2011, Portland, Maine

Starred review from February 14, 2011
Goldman's (The Divine Husband) fifth book is a highly personal account of the author's life in the aftermath of his young wife's drowning. Goldman moves in time from meeting Aura in New York and her harrowing death on Mexico's Pacific Coast to the painful and solitary two years that followed in Brooklyn, marked in part by his mother-in-law's claim that he was responsible for Aura's death. His struggles to exonerate himself from his own conscience, and from his mother-in-law's legal threats, is electric and poignant, encapsulated in painful such moments as the author's discovery of "the indentations of Aura's scooping fingers like fossils" in the surface of her face scrub soon after her death. Goldman also includes fragments of Aura's fiction and her diary: "Played Atari like crazy, rearranged my Barbie house" recall her youth in Mexico City, and "We're on a plane, we've spent most of the day traveling, Paco asleep on my shoulder" illuminate the private moments of the couple's life. Goldman calls this book a novel and employs some novelistic techniques (composite characters, for instance), but the foundation is in truth: messy, ugly, and wildly complicated truth.

July 25, 2011
Goldman's soulful memoir lovingly recalls his brief marriage to Aura Estrada, a Mexican writer and graduate student, and revisits her tragic death in a surfing accident. Sparing readers no aspect of his pain, shock, and grief, Goldman looks back on tender, humble moments from his life with Aura, such as the expensive quilt she bought for their bed and the gossip Web sites she liked to peruse before falling asleep. Robert Fass's narration is never melodramatic; instead he maintains an even keel throughoutâeven during the book's most heart-wrenching moments. Fass captures the book's spirit with its gentle mourning for a lost paradise of marital bliss. A Grove Press hardcover.