Say Her Name

"Say Her Name is a tender and sacred narrative, many-angled, fearless, incandescent in its frankness. As I read it, I felt I were reading something more alive than life itself, and thought this is surely why one reads, why one writes: that one might mingle oneself with a beloved person, a book, a landscape, and hold it . . . utterly alive."-Kiran Desai

From an award-winning novelist and internationally celebrated journalist, a story that scales the heights of love and plumbs the depths of loss.

Acclaimed writer Francisco Goldman was a self-professed niñote, or man-child---unlucky in love, resistant to commitment--when he met the beautiful Aura Estrada, and the contours of his world shifted absolutely. Aura was a brilliant graduate student in creative writing whose forthrightness and passion for life was finally a match to Francisco's own, and before long their lives were intertwined. They were married in the summer of 2005.

The month before their second anniversary, during a long-awaited holiday, Aura died from injuries sustained in a swimming accident in Mexico. Francisco, blamed for Aura's death by her family, and blaming himself, wanted to die, too. But instead he began to write.

In Say Her Name, Goldman gives us the novel of Aura, and of their life together, weighing the glorious gifts of their shared journey against its heavy costs. In spite their age difference, Francisco and Aura shared a youthful delight in the unexpected, connected in their desire to create and be changed by inspiration. Through the prism of his memories and her gifted writings, we follow Aura from her childhood and university days in Mexico City with her fiercely protective mother to her studies at Columbia University and then their newlywed years in New York City and abroad. Goldman invites us into the endearing strangeness of their private world, and in doing so, breathes Aura back to life--a spritely, witty, free-spirited dynamo, luminous and exuberant.

Say Her Name is an exceptional work about love and loss, destiny and accountability, and about how art chooses its servants, and in this case brought them together. What begins as a desperate attempt to make sense of death, becomes an indelible testament to what it means to be transformed by love.

Award-winning writer Francisco Goldman is the author of three other novels, The Divine Husband, The Long Night of White Chickens, and The Ordinary Seaman; and one work of nonfiction, The Art of Political Murder. He currently directs the Premio Aura Estrada/Aura Estrada Prize and lives in Brooklyn and Mexico City.

Advance Praise for Say Her Name

"This is a beautiful love story, and an extraordinary story of loss. Say Her Name has a forensic honesty, a way of treating each detail, each moment, each emotion, with exact care. It also has a way of holding the reader, of moving between Brooklyn and Mexico City, capturing the essence of two worlds, capturing the essence of two people who were lucky enough to fall in love."-Colm Toibin

"We may feel we know something about love's burn, the scorching heat of loss, but reading this book is to stand in front of a blow-torch, to take a farrier's rasp to raw nerve ends. Say Her Name is the terrible account of Goldman's loss of his young wife at a remote Mexican beach, but the strong center is his minute examination of his own possible guilt as he wades through the noded, hallucinatory complications of human relations, follows the twisted rails of communication between himself and the intense personalities of Aura's family. Wrenching, funny, powerful, beautiful." -Annie Proulx

"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 constraints 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

"The madness of love, of death, of loss, of literature-Say 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 ocean's darkest depths. This book is fabulous in every sense of the word."-Rivka Galchen

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

"Say Her Name must be the only book about love ever written. It's certainly the only one I'll ever need to read. Francisco Goldman has alchemized grief into joy, death into life, and the act of reading into one of resurrection. His book is a miracle."-Susan Choi

"Say Her Name is a tender and sacred narrative, many-angled, fearless, incandescent in its frankness. As I read it, I felt I were reading something more alive than life itself, and thought this is surely why one reads, why one writes: that one might mingle oneself with a beloved person, a book, a landscape, and hold it... utterly alive."-Kiran Desai

Bookseller Praise for Say Her Name

"There are books writers choose to write, and there are those where they are chosen. The story Frank Goldman tells in his utterly heartfelt, bravely artful Say Her Name, is surely the last one he would have wanted to write. But it became the one he had to write, a book chronicling almost indescribable loss, and at the same time celebrating vivacity, exuberance, and ardent spirit, the young woman that Aura Estrada was, and through writing, is. In the ache and longing there is also a palpable, transcendent gratitude. This book is a gift to everyone who reads it mindfully, instructive in showing how much we are marked by others in our lives-in life, death, presence, absence-what can be carried in the heart, no matter what." -Rick Simonson, Elliott Bay Book Company, Seattle, WA

"By writing this novel, Goldman has transformed a singular, devastating life experience into art, using his practiced eye to catch every nuance and detail of the life of a couple deeply, almost deliriously in love, and the desperate, disbelieving state of grief that ensues when an accident changes everything in an instant. It is a particular story, but also a universal one, rendered beautifully, achingly, and not to be forgotten." -Marion Abbott, Mrs. Dalloway's Literary & Garden Arts, Berkeley, CA

"When the love of his life dies in a tragic accident, the narrator of Francisco Goldman's new novel Say Her Name sifts through the fragments left behind to tell a story of passion, fragility, and eternal connection. Surprisingly lively, Say Her Name is a brilliant exploration of how relationships develop and endure. This is an intricate, intimate look at two lives interrupted. By the end, you will know the beautiful woman this book is written for, and you will never forget her. Lucky you."-Geoffrey Jennings, Rainy Day Books, Kansas City, KS

"Goldman's novel Say Her Name is an exquisite work. In this portrait of Aura Estrada and the great love they shared, Goldman lovingly documents Estrada's tragically truncated life and her vast potential as a writer. The book is harrowing in its precise rendering of the details of a tragic sudden death and the grief that follows, but ultimately it is a beautiful testimony to love. Say Her Name will inscribe Francisco Goldman's name in the firmament of great contemporary writers." -Paul Yamazaki, City Lights Booksellers, San Francisco, CA

"Francisco Goldman's novel Say Her Name is a beautiful remembrance of his life with his wife and fellow writer Aura Estrada. She dies suddenly and way too young in a freak swimming accident. He paints an extraordinary portrait of their time together, her talents and his stunning grief at her loss-life before, life during and life after. This novel is one for the ages, rich and textural and presented with so much heart and soul that I can only say this story has embedded itself forever into this reader." -Sheryl Cotleur, Book Passage, Corte Madera, CA

"Say Her Name is honest and bracingly beautiful, honoring a remarkable young woman, reveling in love, and confronting unbearable loss. Francisco has created a gift for all who have known, or who wish to know, love, even in its most tragic moments."-Melinda Powers, Capitola Book Café, Capitola, CA