Rosarita
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE SUMMER
From “world-class writer” (The Washington Post) and three-time Booker finalist Anita Desai, an exquisitely written stunning exploration of love, place, memory, history, and the secrets between a mother and her daughter.
Away from her home in India to study Spanish, Bonita sits on a bench in El Jardin de San Miguel, Mexico, basking in the park’s lush beauty, when she slowly becomes aware that she is being watched. An elderly woman approaches her, claiming that she knew Bonita’s mother—that they had been friends when Bonita’s mother had lived in Mexico as a talented young artist. Bonita tells the stranger that she must be mistaken; her mother was not a painter and had never travelled to Mexico. Though the stranger leaves, Bonita cannot shake the feeling that she is being followed.
Days later, haunted by the encounter, Bonita seeks out the woman, whom she calls The Trickster, and follows her on a tour of what may, or may not, have been her mother’s past. As a series of mysterious events brilliantly unfold, Bonita is unable to escape The Trickster’s presence, as she is forced to confront questions of truth and identity, and specters of familial and national violence.
A masterpiece of storytelling from a gifted writer, Rosarita is a profound mediation on mothers and marriage, art and self-expression, and how the traumas from the past can impact future generations.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this provocative if underdeveloped offering from Desai (Fasting, Feasting), an Indian woman studying Spanish in Mexico learns her late mother took a similar path many years earlier. While on a park bench in San Miguel de Allende, Bonita is approached by an older woman named Victoria, who calls her an "Oriental bird" and says she looks just like her mother, Rosarita. Bonita initially disbelieves Victoria when she claims Rosarita came to San Miguel many years ago to study art, and that Victoria met her in the very same park. Though Bonita knows nothing about her mother's travel or interest in art, she later remembers a pastel sketch of a woman on a park bench that could have been from San Miguel and considers how her mother might have sacrificed her art to raise a family. Driven to know more, Bonita finds herself running into Victoria again and again ("Could she, like a wizard or a magician, bring your mother to life again even if it is a life you never knew or suspected?" Desai writes). As Bonita follows in Rosarita's footsteps to Colima and La Manzanilla, intriguing questions are raised, but Desai merely skims the surface of her protagonist's emotions. This will leave readers wanting more.
