Francisco Goldman - Say Her Name

Praise for Say Her Name

A beautiful act of remembrance, love, and understanding. An essential, unforgettable love story and a living testament to an extraordinary woman.Gary Shteyngart

The madness of love, of death, of loss, of literatureSay Her Name is madness knit up into magnificence. We can only suspect that Francisco Goldman is an alchemist, or a magician, or a Faust, or a Job, or all of these things, for with no breathing equipment, he has mined a pearl from the oceans darkest depths. This book is fabulous in every sense of the word.Rivka Galchen

Say Her Name must be the only book about love ever written. Its certainly the only one Ill ever need to read. Francisco Goldman has alchemised grief into joy, death into life, and the act of reading into one of resurrection. His book is a miracle.Susan Choi

Francisco Goldman tells us that in descending into memory like Orpheus he hopes he might bring Aura out alive for a moment. But in the act of writing, Goldman transcends the contraints of myth, and achieves nothing short of the impossible. Page by page, by the breath of his own words, Say Her Name restores Aura from shade to flesh, and returns her, unforgettably and permanently, to our world.Jhumpa Lahiri

It doesnt matter whats truth and whats fiction, for the story is inherently moving and tragic, and it focuses on loss and lamentuniversal themes whether they derive from memoir or from an authors imagination... Appropriately, in this novel of death and dying, Goldman writes gorgeous, heartbreaking prose.Kirkus Reviews, starred review

The feeling, the memorial incarnation that this book creates, is monumental. Essential... This book about tragic death is a gift for the living.Library Journal, starred review

There is beautiful writing in this bookbeautiful, perceptive descriptions of places, beautifully turned assaults on the citadel of loss, on the firmament of love and passion, indelible glimpses of the self as bedlam. And thank goodness its so, because it is such a sad story that only beauty could possibly redeem it.Richard Ford

Enrapturing... Vivid... Goldman has entwined fact and fiction in his previous novels, but never so daringly or so poignantly.... Tender, candid, sorrowful, and funny, this ravishing novel embodies the relentless power of the sea, as hearts are exposed like a beach at low tide only to be battered by a resurgent, obliterating force, like the wave that claims Auras life on the Oaxaca coast. Out of crushing loss and despair, Goldman has forged a radiant and transcendent masterpiece.Booklist, starred review

Say Her Name

Award-winning writer Francisco Goldman is the author of three novels, The Divine Husband, The Long Night of White Chickens and The Ordinary Seaman, and one work of non-fiction, The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop? Goldman has been a contributing editor for Harpers 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. He currently directs the Premio Auro Estrada/Aura Estrada Prize and lives in Brooklyn and Mexico City.

Francisco Goldman

First published in Great Britain in 2011 by Grove Press UK, an imprint of Grove/Atlantic Inc.

First published in the United States of America in 2011 by Grove/Atlantic Inc.

Copyright Francisco Goldman, 2011

For their support during the writing of this book, my gratitude to the American Academy of Berlin and the von der Heyden Family Foundation; the Ucross Foundation; and Beatrice Monti and the Santa Maddalenna Foundation. Also my deepest thanks to N.G. in Mexico City and K.R. in New Yorkyou helped me through the worst of it.F. G.

The moral right of Francisco Goldman to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Every effort has been made to trace or contact all copyright-holders. The publishers will be pleased to make good any omissions or rectify any mistakes brought to their attention at the earliest opportunity.

If You Find Yourself Caught In Love, written by Bob Kildea, Christopher Geddes, Michael Cooke, Richard Colburn, Sarah Martin, Stephen Jackson, and Stuart Murdoch. Copyright 2003 Sony/ATV Music Publishing UK Limited. All rights administered by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, 8 Music Square West, Nashville, TN 37203. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Little Red Cap from the book The Worlds Wife by Carol Ann Duffy. Copyright 1999 by Carol Ann Duffy. Originally published by Picador, an imprint Pan Macmillan, London. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Stephanie Says, written by Lou Reed. Copyright Metal Machine Music. US and Canadian Rights for Metal Machine Music controlled and administered by Spirit One Music (BMI). World excluding US and Canadian Rights controlled and administered by EMI Music Publishing, Ltd. International Copyright Secured. Used by Permission. All Rights Reserved.

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A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback ISBN 978 1 61185 602 6
Trade paperback ISBN 978 1 61185 598 2

Printed in Great Britian by

Grove Press UK

Ormond House

2627 Boswell Street

London
WC1N 3JZ

www.groveatlantic.com

E-book ISBN: 978-1-6118-5997-3

Vladimir: Suppose we repented...
Estragon: Our being born?

Waiting for Godot, Samuel Beckett

It isnt simply deathits always the death of someone.

Serge Leclaire

Dear Losse! since thy untimely fate
My task hath beene to meditate
On Thee, on Thee; Thou art the Book,
The Library whereon I look,
Though almost blind.

Exequy on his Wife, Henry King,
Bishop of Chichester

I wouldnt want to be faster
or greener than now if you were with me O you
were the best of all my days

Animals, Frank OHara

... and perhaps you will find out when you go to heaven, after your gig with the Shanghai Bureau. And perhaps you will find your bear costume in a closet in heaven.

My Shanghai Days, Aura Estrada

Say Her Name

Aura died on July 25, 2007. I went back to Mexico for the first anniversary because I wanted to be where it had happened, at that beach on the Pacific coast. Now, for the second time in a year, Id come home again to Brooklyn without her.

Three months before she died, April 24, Aura had turned thirty. Wed been married twenty-six days shy of two years.

Auras mother and uncle accused me of being responsible for her death. Its not as if I consider myself not guilty. If I were Juanita, I know I would have wanted to put me in prison, too. Though not for the reasons she and her brother gave.

From now on, if you have anything to say to me, put it in writingthats what Leopoldo, Auras uncle, said on the telephone when he told me that he was acting as Auras mothers attorney in the case against me. We havent spoken since.