The Memory Room
A Novel
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
The novel opens with Barbara, who, after remembering incidents of torture at the hands of her father, has quite literally broken down. Found inside a disabled elevator, she is no longer able to function with her new consciousness of these memories—those which are so resistant to understanding. Confronted with this knowledge of evil, she must begin the painful process of remembering and reconstructing a new whole self.
Helping Barbara to navigate her grief and her memories are her therapist, the Psalms, and most of all, the words of Paul Celan. Paul Celan: 1920–1970, Poet. An eastern European holocaust survivor who wrote haunting poems about the darker spiritual trials of life and relationships that exhibit a compact style that fuses broken words and chopped syntax to produce a stark musicality.
This is a novel about a woman who goes to hell and back. It's a story which affirms the resilience of the human spirit and the healing power of love and faith.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
With subtlety, restraint and an extraordinary eye for detail, Rakow has constructed a breathtaking debut that avoids the clich s of abuse narratives as it tests the boundaries of prose and poetry. When Barbara Harris is stuck alone in an elevator, she experiences a torrent of long forgotten childhood memories, most of which involve the torture and neglect of Barbara and her two siblings by their monstrous parents. Barely able to function, she takes leave from her university job, but her condition worsens as she realizes that the people and things she once relied on cannot help her. She smashes her beloved cello; even her pastor dismisses her: "There's a lot of this going around. People saying they're remembering things." The man she loves, Daniel, has moved to England, and although her elderly neighbor, Josephine, attempts to coax her back into the real world, these good intentions have the opposite effect, putting pressure on Barbara to heal. With the gentle guidance of a psychologist, Barbara gradually puts herself back together, accepting her worth as an individual and taking renewed joy in what she loves. Drawing from the Psalms and the poems of Paul Celan, Rakow has written a novel that distills the mysteries of suffering, faith and salvation into a complex yet accessible whole. The horror of her tale is ultimately redressed by the sensitivity and skill with which it is told.
