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Overview
In Naming the Spirits, Lawrence Thornton returns to Argentina as the Dirty War is ending to tell the story of a teenage girl who miraculously survives a night in a killing field. When she awakens after an extensive, tormented sleep, she sets out upon a complex and emotional journey. Drifting across the pampas as if guided by benevolent spirits, she arrives in Buenos Aires, at the home of the Cristianis. Disheveled and bearing the scar of a bullet wound on her forehead, she can only utter the words "I am." The Cristianis - whose only daughter disappeared during Argentina's Dirty War - immediately take her in, setting into motion a searing tale of loss and redemption.The author of the award-winning Imagining Argentina returns to that enchanting, dangerous country to tell a mysterious story. After surviving a night in a killing field, a young girl, who possesses no memory, is taken in by a family whose own daughter has disappeared, and quickly dominates their lives.
Editorials
Publishers Weekly -
Thornton burst upon the literary scene in 1987 with his incandescent novel, Imagining Argentina, a surreal evocation of the people who were disappeared by the totalitarian military regime during Argentina's ``Dirty War.'' While this sequel does not have the incantatory power of the first book, it builds an atmosphere of quiet horror that eventually elicits a visceral response. Here, he strives to dramatize the psychic wounds that remain in a population whose new, nominally democratic government issued a blanket amnesty to those who had committed wholesale murder. He animates this general amnesia in the character of the traumatized teenager called only ``the girl.'' In the first-totally gripping-chapter, she becomes the sole survivor of a death-squad massacre. When she awakens after being shot in the head, she is unable to remember even her own name, much less those of the 11 others who were slaughtered. It is the spirits of these dead who narrate the book in a collective ``we''-a device that is initially somewhat heavyhanded. The girl is taken in and cared for by the occupants of an apartment building in Buenos Aires, some of whom have links to Carlos Ruedas, the seer in Imagining Argentina. The stories of many lives are interwoven here; they include those of the girl's benefactors and of a former government functionary and his wife, who have stolen the sons of a murdered couple and are raising them without any insight into the enormity of their crime. In addition, some of the spirits tell why they were killed. The novel has a dreamy, elegiac quality-Thornton himself refers to a section of the narrative as ``a place where the action slows down'' -and the cumulative effect of the many voices is not truly felt until close to the end. This novel's very restraint contributes to its resonance, however, as Thornton again demonstrates his ability to personalize the dimensions of political mass murder. ABA giveaway. (Sept.)Library Journal
The publisher has big plans for this new novel, a sequel to the 1987 Ernest Hemingway Foundation Award winner Imagining Argentina (LJ 10/1/87). Here, a young girl who survives a night of violence during Argentina's "Dirty War" works subtle changes on the family with whom she finds refuge.Book Details
Published
September 1, 1996
Publisher
Bantam Dell Pub Group (Trd)
Pages
272
Format
Paperback
ISBN
9780553378405