With Chile and Antigua as backdrop, Serrano tells a powerful story of two very different women who have been friends since childhood and whose lives have become inextricably intertwined. Josefa Ferrer is a famous singer who wakes one morning to read that her friend, Violeta, has been involved in a shooting. Unsure why she did not see the tragedy coming, Josefa looks back over Violeta's life and eventually her own, trying to explain how each got to a place in their lives where they needed to make a drastic change. Told through Josefa's eyes, the story is really two parts, the first focusing on Violeta's life leading up to the shooting and the second centering on Josefa's life after the shooting. Serrano seamlessly ties their stories together but falters over the pacing only when she steps on her political soapbox. She is at her best when exploring the women's relationships with each other. With lyrical prose and in rich detail, Serrano creates two strong women whose friendship survives and thrives when all else falls apart. Carolyn Kubisz
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
From Kirkus Reviews
This exploration of the mysteries of womanhood, artistic and political commitment, and identity focuses on the lifelong symbiotic friendship between rootless artist-architect Violeta Dasinski and famous pop singer Josefa Ferrer, who tells their story. Chilean novelist Serrano begins her tale in 1994, when a violent crime committed by Violeta propels Josefa to retrieve her friend's diaries--which, thereafter juxtaposed with Josefa's memories, piece together the fragmented history of their shared youthful idealism, and the separate paths each took, to be joined again only sporadically, and most memorably in the sanctuary (far from the Pinochet regime's crimes against humanity) of Antigua (in Guatemala): the last hiding place in the world; a city with zero aggressiveness, totally peaceful. The frequent richness of detail does involve us, but its preponderance of faux-mystical celebrations of feminine creativity and bonding (encapsulated in numerous allusions to the confrontational poetry of Adrienne Rich) reduce it to argument whenever it cries out for drama and, incidentally, make us wonder why (the rather generically radical and solipsistic) Violeta is so much more interesting to Josefa than she is to the reader.Only intermittently compelling. -- Copyright © 2000 Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
"Marcela is heir to Scheherazade. In Antigua and My Life Before, a woman again saves our lives by telling, every night, a new story. [Her novel] is an answer to the primeval death surrounding us. Thanks to writers like Marcela, life will never speak its last word."
--Carlos Fuentes
"Her novels are wise and brilliantly feminine. To read Marcela Serrano is to peer into the eyes of every woman in the world."
--Arturo Pérez-Reverte, author of The Flanders Panel and The Club Dumas
"Serrano's prose is filled with phantasmagoric descriptions and suffused with the lush lyricism that distinguishes the work of Carlos Fuentes and Isabel Allende... With a dramatic plot and rich language, this is a stirring novel that inspires with its political astuteness, feminist ideology and literary quality."
-- Publisher's Weekly
From the Trade Paperback edition.
From the Inside Flap
r, a famous Chilean singer and star, awakens one morning to read in the Santiago newspaper that her best friend, Violeta, has been involved in a brutal act of violence. Overwhelmed with regret and plagued with guilt for not having foreseen the tragedy, Josefa feels compelled to tell Violeta's life story--one marked by lost ideals, disillusionment, and grief--which is ultimately Josefa's story, too. Through the interwoven lives of these two women, Marcela Serrano explores how the demands of a woman's role as mother, wife, lover, and friend are frequently at odds with her own dreams and aspirations, and how easily the fragile bonds of friendship and family can be strained to the breaking point. For Josefa and Violeta, it is only in Antigua, under the watchful eyes of "the others"--a chorus of female ancestral spirits who testify to the women's defining moments of strength and courage--that Josefa and Violeta will discover that even in the aftermath of violence and betraya
From the Back Cover
"Marcela is heir to Scheherazade. In Antigua and My Life Before, a woman again saves our lives by telling, every night, a new story. [Her novel] is an answer to the primeval death surrounding us. Thanks to writers like Marcela, life will never speak its last word."
--Carlos Fuentes
"Her novels are wise and brilliantly feminine. To read Marcela Serrano is to peer into the eyes of every woman in the world."
--Arturo Pérez-Reverte, author of The Flanders Panel and The Club Dumas
"Serrano's prose is filled with phantasmagoric descriptions and suffused with the lush lyricism that distinguishes the work of Carlos Fuentes and Isabel Allende... With a dramatic plot and rich language, this is a stirring novel that inspires with its political astuteness, feminist ideology and literary quality."
-- Publisher's Weekly
About the Author
Marcela Serrano was born in Santiago, Chile, in 1951. In 1994, her first novel won the Literary Prize in Santiago, and her second book won the Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz prize, awarded to the best Hispano-American novel written by a woman. She now teaches at the University of Vicente Pérez Rosales in Mexico City.
Margaret Sayers Peden is an award-winning translator and has worked closely with numerous illustrious Latin American writers, including Carlos Fuentes, Isabel Allende, and Octavio Paz.
Marcela Serrano teaches at the University of Vicente Perez Rosales in Mexico City.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The day the Berlin Wall fell.
Everything began that November 9, 1989, with the fall of the Wall. Who could have imagined how much more would come down with it?
Which was what I told Violeta Dasinski that day.
I ought to have been a witness; if only I'd paid more attention.
In the photograph there is a forlornness in her expression I hadn't noticed until now. As if her consciousness were dissolving in her eyes.
The date of the beginning of Violeta Dasinski's public life was the day her name appeared on the front page of the Santiago newspapers: November 15, 1991.
I was awakened. Suddenly came the end of dreams and beginning of recall. Abruptly I went back, picking up the memory that preceded the long stroll through my unconscious. Andres was bringing my breakfast, and there on the tray was the morning paper. Then I saw her.
I studied that face in the photograph. But it is a different Violeta who pursues me: fuchsia glitter on her harlequin mask--clown or Pierrot?--and the hands of the makeup artist transforming her into a sad Venetian with gold and red confetti on her neck.
There was something I had to do.
I got the car keys and left.
"Every reporter in town will be there, Josefa. Don't go!" Andres could not hide his concern.
"I have no choice."
"Then I'm coming."
"No, this is something between Violeta and me."
As I came closer to the Nunoa neighborhood a shiver ran down my spine. When I turned into Calle Gerona to park in front of Violeta's house, I saw two policemen guarding the front door. In fact, all the press was there, lying in ambush. Recognizing me seemed to give them new vigor, and they rolled toward me like an avalanche. The policemen came to my defense. One took my arm.
"It is you! What are you doing here?"
"I need to go in, I have to talk to her daughter."
"No one's in the house. They took the girl away."
"Please, let me go in. I'm a friend of the family. I have to get something." The cop looked puzzled. "There are things of mine I left here a couple of days ago, things I don't want to fall into just anyone's hands." As I lowered my voice the confusion in his eyes deepened. "Please . . ."
I had no doubt that he wanted to let me go in, but it wouldn't go well with him if he did. He looked at his partner. He was holding back the journalists, who hadn't given up and were trying--at the top of their lungs--to ask me questions.
"You come with me," I proposed. "That way you can see that I'm not up to anything."
"It isn't that, señora. Well, since it's you . . . I'll come with you."
I went inside, hearing the cop's footsteps behind me and sensing his curiosity: I could almost have touched him. Once in that long, dark--all the shutters were closed--typically Nunoa corridor, I went straight to the back, to the sunroom. Unhampered, the morning light was pouring in through thousands of tiny panes. Beyond them, the deserted, nostalgic patio. I felt a shock, as if Violeta were waiting for me, sitting in the flowered linen armchair. On the air was a hint of her incense, her perfumed candles. Violeta and that sunroom were one and the same, one passed its feelings to the other, absorbing, fusing. But of course she wasn't there.
To the right, sitting against the thick green wall, was the trunk. A rectangle of yellowish-brown varnished wicker facing the thousand little panes of glass, waiting for me. "My grandmother Carlota saved it from the Chillan earthquake," Violeta had told me many times, as if I didn't know. I hurried to open it--the key never worked--and dug into the disorderly order: books, notebooks, stationery, clippings, drawings. My mind raced: where are they? I can't hunt through everything, they're supposed to be mine, I should know . . . I saw them. Several notebooks of assorted sizes tied together with a simple cord. And on top of them, a large notebook bound in dark brown leather. If I hadn't given it to her myself, I would have had a hard time recognizing it. I took it out confidently and the policeman seemed relieved.
"Is that everything?"
I hesitated. And the others, the ones tied together? The single notebook in my hands seemed innocent enough, credible, something I might have forgotten. But the others? I didn't have the heart to leave them there. You owe it to Violeta, my conscience dictated, stiffening my spine. I took them.
"This is everything." I looked at him, radiating assurance, as I tried to stuff the whole bundle in my purse.
"S-S-Señora," the poor man stammered, his dark eyes moving from the handbag to my eyes, from my eyes to the handbag. Then I did something out of character: I offered him an autograph. That wavering gaze lighted up.
I went to Violeta's desk. She always had paper on hand. Beside the clean stack was a book opened to page ninety. I asked the policeman's first name and wrote a long and affectionate inscription.
My exit was triumphal. (Poor Andres, how could I explain to him that he couldn't have pulled it off?) I'd been so focused on my task that I had forgotten the press. I was furious when as soon as I stepped out the door I felt the heat of their spotlights in my face: the TV crew had arrived. Without missing a beat, I asked the policeman--who had his autograph in his pocket--to escort me to the car: I had nothing to say.
Three blocks away my facade of assurance collapsed. When I had gone to Violeta's desk I had seen page ninety of the open book. I couldn't help it. I suppose it was the last thing Violeta read. Those two verses, falteringly underlined in brown ink, swept over me.
The page was Adrienne Rich's "Poem of Women." Oh, Violeta, I wasn't eager for us to go our separate ways. No, believe me, I didn't mean to be a heedless witness to what you were going through.
I can reproduce the underlined words, I know them by heart:
And all the limbs of a woman plead for the ache of birth. And women come down to lie like sick sheep by the wells--to heal their bodies, their faces blackened with year-long thirst for a child's cry . . . and pregnant women approach the white tables of the hospital with quiet steps and smile at the unborn child and perhaps at death.
Violeta, tell me that your smile was for the unborn child, but don't tell me if it was for death.
