Review
As Francisco Goldman says midway through his book, all over the world, everyday, people lose loved ones, yet each person's loss is unique. Each of us has a story to tell, a love to honor, and an excruciating path of grief to bear while learning to live without the one who died.
After Aura's death, Goldman read everything he could get his hands on about grieving, and not one of the books could explain how he should deal with having lost the love of his life; so he wrote his own book. It is brilliant, brutal, truthful, and I found great reassurance in his words, as there is no easy or dignified way to bear the insanity that death and loss bring.
Although it is a novel of shattering loss,
Say Her Name leaves the impression of a story of lasting love. Francisco and Aura, despite the large age gap between them, find their soul mates in one another; they...
Beyond the Book
In addition to memorializing and honoring Aura Estrada in his novel, Francisco Goldman also established a literary prize in 2008 in her name.
Aura Estrada was a published short story writer in several Mexican and Latin American magazines including
Letralia,
Letras Libres, and
Gatopardo, and, among many other projects, she published book reviews for
The Boston Review and
Bookforum. In the year before her death, she was at work on a novel. Though she was close to earning her PhD through the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Literature at Columbia University, her dream was to...
