Synopses & Reviews
Coming off the most successful book of a decorated careerSay Her NameThe Interior Circuit is Francisco Goldmans timely and provocative journey into the heart of Mexico City.The Interior Circuit is Goldmans story of his emergence from grief five years after his wifes death, symbolized by his attempt to overcome his fear of driving in the city. Embracing the DF (Mexico City) as his home, Goldman explores and celebrates the city, which stands defiantly apart from so many of the social ills and violence wracking Mexico. This is the chronicle of an awakening, both personal and political, interior” and exterior,” to the meaning and responsibilities of home. Mexicos narco war rages on and, with the restoration of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (the PRI) to power in the summers 2012 elections, the DFs special apartness seems threatened. In the summer of 2013, when Mexican organized crime violence and death erupts in the city in an unprecedented way, Goldman sets out to try to understand the menacing challenges the city now faces. By turns exuberant, poetic, reportorial, philosophic, and urgent, The Interior Circuit fuses a personal journey to an account of one of the worlds most remarkable and often misunderstood cities.
Review
One of New York magazine's "7 Books You Need to read this July"; A Vanity Fair Hot Type pick; An Amazon "Best of" pick for JulyRemarkable
Sentence by sentence, Goldman brings to life a city that is bewitching, terrifying, beautiful
.Goldman brings something new to the [chronicle] form.”John Freeman, Boston Globe
"So sneakily brilliant it's hard to put into words. Part travelogue, part memoir, part reportage on Mexican politics and the scourge of narco-terrorism, it is also, in the finest sense, a book that creates its own form....the genius of "The Interior Circuit," [is that it] link[s] Goldman's grief for Aura to the grief of all these families and indeed of Mexico. It's an audacious move, but it works because of the offhand beauty of the writing, which shifts from individual to collective with the fluid grace of circumstance."David Ulin, Los Angeles Times
"Both an homage to the (albeit flawed) city [Goldman] calls home and a meditation on the many residents himself included who have experienced loss there...Goldman is a keen observer and an apt guide to Mexican politics and society."Adam Goodman, Washington Post
Goldman is a keen observer and an apt guide to Mexican politics and society.
"An indispensable contribution to the growing body of artistic representations of Mexicos most recent years of darkness...there is an urgent, raw beauty in Franks prose, as if we are plugged into an only slightly edited version of his journals, and it is full of cortos”: journal gives way to reportage, reportage to lament, lament to polemic, polemic to erudite rumination...Frank throws himself into the Heavens case with tremendous journalistic energy, badgering officials, cultivating confidential sources, scouring what looks like just about every press account, and, most importantly and at some risk, by crossing the social border and stepping into the old barrio to interview the relatives of the disappeared...Here Frank joins a growing crew of writers (among them Marcela Turati, Oscar Martínez, Cristina Rivera Garza, John Gibler, Magali Tercero, Sergio González Rodríguez, Diego Osorno, Daniel Hernández, Lydia Cacho, Anabel Hernández*) who undertake dogged investigative journalism the kind there is precious little support for in the digital age, and which in the Latin American context can get you killed and dedicate themselves to revealing the victims, itself an eminently political (and also spiritual) task that is the heart of Javier Sicilias movement...Interior Circuit confronts the corto, the short-circuit, as in too-brief-is-our-time, by recognizing the absurdity of both freakish” and politicized death, and of the necessity of mourning both intimately and in community of reconnecting the broken circuit with the language of pain itself."Rubén Martínez, Los Angeles Review of Books
"Goldman draws an imagined geography that depicts very well the harsh realities which those of us who live in the DF face. We must be grateful that a foreigner has given back to us the feeling that, in spite of everything, it's worth it to live so intensely the interior circuits of [Mexico] city."Roger Bartre, Letras Libres
"Though much can be said about the elegance of Goldman's writing and the piercing quality of his reportage, it's really the emotion-driven moments - his identification with those seeking to improve the city's living conditions and with those affected by the Tepito victims' deaths - that take "The Interior Circuit" to a commendable height that even crónica doesn't set out to reach...Altogether moving and eye-opening, "The Interior Circuit" is as much a love letter to Mexico City as it is to his late wife."Rigoberto González, San Francisco Chronicle
"Suddenly, thanks to the keen eye and sympathetic imagination of the journalist and novelist Francisco Goldman, I care about the place that locals call the D.F....Goldman is by turns impassioned and detached, loving his adopted city while by no means blind to its many faults...Goldman made me care. Thats what the best writers do."Chris Tucker, Dallas Morning News
"Incisive observation, flashing wit, intense curiosity...vivid prose...The vibrant life of Mexico City makes for a compelling story in its own right, and not merely as the backdrop for Goldman's personal quest, as absorbing as that continues to be. In either of its incarnations, this is a story about love, whether for a person or for a city, in all the complicated, rewarding and painful messiness that emotion entails."Harvey Freedenberg, Book Reporter.com
"Much of the pleasure of The Interior Circuit builds on Goldman's knowledge and love of Mexico City and his unabashed personalization of its streets and student dives....If The Interior Circuit is partly Goldman's chronicle of overcoming personal sorrow, it is even more his take on the politics, complexity, romance and vibrancy of one of the great megacities of the world."Shelf Awareness
"Exquisite...perceptive, funny, and philosophical...Throughout this remarkable book, Goldman is highly attuned to the pulse and rhythm of one of the worlds most captivating cities."Publishers Weekly (starred review)
This book is an exquisite, deeply funny, truly gorgeous panorama of Mexico City by a writer of enormous sensitivities who notices everything. This book will charm and urgently engage you like no other, because it is so totally original. It includes the dirty parts.”Rachel Kushner
Praise for SAY HER NAME
Quietly devastating . . . Powerful . . . As the story buildsinevitably, unbearablytoward Auras last day, Goldman has so convincingly brought her to life that her death still somehow comes as a shock. . . . Goldmans beautifully written, deeply felt ode to his wife . . . lets you meet this unusual woman through Goldmans lovestruck gaze, and you cant help falling for her a little too. Even after the book ends, the sting of Auras absence lingers.” Entertainment Weekly (A-)
"A masterpiece of storytelling and scene-setting."Colm Toibin, The Guardian (Best Books of 2011)
"Goldman's searing novel Say Her Name is for me the book of the year. . . . A soaring paean to a brilliant young woman and to the infinite invincible power of love."Junot Diaz, New York (Favorite Books of the Year)
Passionate and moving . . . Beautifully written
the truth that emerges in this book has less to do with the mystery of [Auras] death . . . than with the miracle of the astonishing, spirited, deeply original young woman Goldman so adored
.So remarkable is this resurrection that at times I felt the book itself had a pulse.”The New York Times Book Review
To call Francisco Goldmans book about the death of his young Mexican wife an elegy hardly represents it. Lament is closer, but insufficient. It is a chain of eruptions, a meteor shower; not just telling but bombarding us in a loss that glitters. With the power and fine temper of its writing, it is as much poem as prose. . . . Tense set pieces, respectively heartbreaking and chilling
generate the books propulsive drama. What they propel, though, is its most remarkable achievement: the incandescent portrait of a marriage of opposites.”The Boston Globe
"Say Her Name brings something new to the rime of the grieving survivor: fresh supplies of imagination, ruthlessness and over-the-edge crazy love. . . . The intensity, tenderness and heat of this love is extraordinary; how many of us have ever been loved so well? Or would recognize such love, were it not laid out with such intelligence and precision?” Newsday
[Say Her Name] is exhilarating, a testament to love that questions our suppositions about luck, fate, good fortune, and tragedy, and demands our agency in interpreting the narrative arc of an altered life. . . . Goldmans novel stands as an incisive, diamond-sharp act of love.” Vanity Fair
Extraordinary . . . The more deeply you have loved in your life, the more this book will wrench you. . . . In a voice that is alternately lush and naked, lyrical and sardonic, philosophical and wry . . . Say Her Name will transport you into the most primal joy in the human repertoirethe joy of loving
[It] pushes back against the tides of forgetting, and gives Aura a new body, a literary body, to inhabita body so vivid that by the end of the book we feel as though we ourselves have met and loved this woman.”San Francisco Chronicle
Beautiful, raw, haunting . . . [Say Her Name is] a working diagram of love, all its wiring and bolts. . . . Losing a spouse is like contracting an incurable illness. Many medicines will be essayed [but] the only real cure is the return of the lost. Writing a book must present itself as the next best remedy, given . . . how many writers have had recourse to its purgative powers: Joan Didion, Joyce Carol Oates, Calvin Trillin. . . All wrote memorable books about losing their mates. These are essential volumes in the library of grief and remembrance; with Say Her Name, the inimitable powers of poetic fiction are added to the memorial shelf. . . . Writing like this, immediate, hopeful, vibrant, can only be considered an act of creative restoration. It is also a prayer to prevent another loss: forgetting." Melissa H. Pierson, The Barnes and Noble Review
A heartbreaking novel of loss and grief.”O Magazine
Goldman has called on his formidable resources to tell the story of Auras life, their life together and his grief as a widower. . . . Harrowing and often splendid reading . . . these pages manage to bring Aura Estrada back to life. She is unforgettable. Count me glad and grateful to know her name.” The Cleveland Plain Dealer
"Riveting . . . In giving Auras imaginationas well as her impish humor, her anxieties, her academic and creative struggles, her writing, her loveroom to play, Goldman, remarkably, vividly, brings her to life.” Bookpage
An earthy, sexy book . . . Say Her Name resonates with sense of place and grasp of character. . . . [Goldman] describes Aura so vividly it is as though she regains life as a free spirit of remarkable imagination.” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"In telling the story of an exuberant young woman coming into her own as a scholar and writer, [Francisco Goldman] finds a kind of haunted solaceand tremendous commemorative power...Published as fiction, Goldman's tribute to his late wife rings devastatingly true." Vogue
Goldman's power of description lulls you into forgetting that you're reading a tragedy. . . . He blurs the line between lover and biographer. . . . [Say Her Name] is a map of grief and work and missed chances " NPR.org
[Say Her Name] unfolds as a sequence of long flashbacks leading toward Auras death, which ticks grimly through the narrative like a bomb. . . . Trapped in a Chinese puzzle box of anguish, [Francisco Goldman] revisits moments, words, thoughts, anecdotes and images. His life with Aura seems still to be happening inside him, playing itself over and over, inevitably interrupted but never ended.” The Washington Post
Say Her Name is the real thing350 mesmerizing pages that dont fit the usual script. . . . Honest and exquisitely written . . . alove story with real emotional power.” The Seattle Times
Wrenching . . . The story moves inexorably toward [Auras] death, but along the way it beautifully preserves the mementos of her life . . . touched with essential and painful wisdom about love.” Wall Street Journal
"Thanks to Goldmans powers of revivification, Aura [is] about as forgettable as Cleopatra. Both a beautiful evocation of love and loss, and a searing dispatch written from within a personal Ground Zero. . . . [Say Her Name is] the must-read novel of the summer.” Sunday Times (UK)
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 detailed and 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, author of Brooklyn
Review
Praise for THE INTERIOR CIRCUIT:
A Los Angeles Times Top 10 Books of 2014; The Guardian 10 Best City Books of 2014; Biographiles Best overlooked memoirs 2014; New York Public Library's Best Books of 2014; Business Insider Australia (Librarians' Pics for Best Books of 2014); San Francisco Chronicle (Writers Share Best Books of 2014 - Maria Venegas Pick); Vue Weekly Best Books of 2014
One of New York magazine's "7 Books You Need to read this July"; A Vanity Fair Hot Type pick; An Amazon "Best of" pick for July
Remarkable
Sentence by sentence, Goldman brings to life a city that is bewitching, terrifying, beautiful
.Goldman brings something new to the [chronicle] form.”John Freeman, Boston Globe
"So sneakily brilliant it's hard to put into words. Part travelogue, part memoir, part reportage on Mexican politics and the scourge of narco-terrorism, it is also, in the finest sense, a book that creates its own form....the genius of "The Interior Circuit," [is that it] link[s] Goldman's grief for Aura to the grief of all these families and indeed of Mexico. It's an audacious move, but it works because of the offhand beauty of the writing, which shifts from individual to collective with the fluid grace of circumstance."David Ulin, Los Angeles Times
"Both an homage to the (albeit flawed) city [Goldman] calls home and a meditation on the many residents himself included who have experienced loss there...Goldman is a keen observer and an apt guide to Mexican politics and society."Adam Goodman, Washington Post
"An indispensable contribution to the growing body of artistic representations of Mexicos most recent years of darkness...there is an urgent, raw beauty in Franks prose, as if we are plugged into an only slightly edited version of his journals, and it is full of cortos”: journal gives way to reportage, reportage to lament, lament to polemic, polemic to erudite rumination...Frank throws himself into the Heavens case with tremendous journalistic energy, badgering officials, cultivating confidential sources, scouring what looks like just about every press account, and, most importantly and at some risk, by crossing the social border and stepping into the old barrio to interview the relatives of the disappeared...Here Frank joins a growing crew of writers (among them Marcela Turati, Oscar Martínez, Cristina Rivera Garza, John Gibler, Magali Tercero, Sergio González Rodríguez, Diego Osorno, Daniel Hernández, Lydia Cacho, Anabel Hernández*) who undertake dogged investigative journalism the kind there is precious little support for in the digital age, and which in the Latin American context can get you killed and dedicate themselves to revealing the victims, itself an eminently political (and also spiritual) task that is the heart of Javier Sicilias movement...Interior Circuit confronts the corto, the short-circuit, as in too-brief-is-our-time, by recognizing the absurdity of both freakish” and politicized death, and of the necessity of mourning both intimately and in community of reconnecting the broken circuit with the language of pain itself."Rubén Martínez, Los Angeles Review of Books
"Goldman draws an imagined geography that depicts very well the harsh realities which those of us who live in the DF face. We must be grateful that a foreigner has given back to us the feeling that, in spite of everything, it's worth it to live so intensely the interior circuits of [Mexico] city."Roger Bartre, Letras Libres
"Though much can be said about the elegance of Goldman's writing and the piercing quality of his reportage, it's really the emotion-driven moments - his identification with those seeking to improve the city's living conditions and with those affected by the Tepito victims' deaths - that take "The Interior Circuit" to a commendable height that even crónica doesn't set out to reach...Altogether moving and eye-opening, "The Interior Circuit" is as much a love letter to Mexico City as it is to his late wife."Rigoberto González, San Francisco Chronicle
"Goldmans journey is an intensely personal quest...Beautiful writing and unblinking honesty...little has yet been written about the Peña Nieto presidency and Goldman is thought-provoking on the corrupt path he sees Mexico stuck on, and the uncertain course that lies ahead."Jude Webber Financial Times
Francisco Goldman, whom I never read before this year, has quickly become one of my favorite contemporary authors. This great work of literary nonfiction begins after the tragic death of its authors wife and moves forward as a variegated chronicle of Mexico City.”Jonathon Sturgeon, Flavorwire
Goldman transcends the personal, transmuting the role of memoirist into that of city chronicler.... Goldmans surrealistic portrait of DF gives due weight to the citys layered complexities... In searching for some essence in the city Goldman finds an inner territory beyond personal grief.”The Daily Beast
"Suddenly, thanks to the keen eye and sympathetic imagination of the journalist and novelist Francisco Goldman, I care about the place that locals call the D.F....Goldman is by turns impassioned and detached, loving his adopted city while by no means blind to its many faults...Goldman made me care. Thats what the best writers do."Chris Tucker, Dallas Morning News
"Incisive observation, flashing wit, intense curiosity...vivid prose...The vibrant life of Mexico City makes for a compelling story in its own right, and not merely as the backdrop for Goldman's personal quest, as absorbing as that continues to be. In either of its incarnations, this is a story about love, whether for a person or for a city, in all the complicated, rewarding and painful messiness that emotion entails."Harvey Freedenberg, Book Reporter.com
"Much of the pleasure of The Interior Circuit builds on Goldman's knowledge and love of Mexico City and his unabashed personalization of its streets and student dives....If The Interior Circuit is partly Goldman's chronicle of overcoming personal sorrow, it is even more his take on the politics, complexity, romance and vibrancy of one of the great megacities of the world."Shelf Awareness
"Exquisite...perceptive, funny, and philosophical...Throughout this remarkable book, Goldman is highly attuned to the pulse and rhythm of one of the worlds most captivating cities."Publishers Weekly (starred review)
This book is an exquisite, deeply funny, truly gorgeous panorama of Mexico City by a writer of enormous sensitivities who notices everything. This book will charm and urgently engage you like no other, because it is so totally original. It includes the dirty parts.”Rachel Kushner
About the Author
Francisco Goldman is the author of the novels: Say Her Name; The Long Night of White Chickens, winner of the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction; The Ordinary Seaman, a finalist for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award; and The Divine Husband. His last book of non-fiction, The Art of Political Murder, was awarded the Index on Censorships TR Fyvel Freedom of Expression Book Award.