Some years ago when María Espinosa was still my student, she presented me with a novel, entitled Longing, she had written about her eccentric husband from Chile, Antonio, in the book. The narrative was so alive and convincing, it sounded more like a slice of life, a document. A number of other novels followed, until the present one, Dying Unfinished, which takes up the main characters of Longing, who are now seen from a distance of many years. The first novel was a brave act of defiance because it involved her family. Now most have disappeared, and the present novel is a memorial, a work of devotion towards mother, father, husband, daughter, brothers, and related lovers and friends. It is a tableau of complicated relations in which the mother is the central figure, and Rosa the daughter, still plays the role of observer, narrator, and actor in the story. Once more Espinosa shows her skill in bringing to life and literature her story, in a very unusual family novel. This time it’s not scandal, but the dual points of view of mother and daughter that make it live. My advice to readers is to read them both, to complete this dual tableau which makes fascinating open-ended reading.
– Nanos Valaoritis, author of Pan Daimonium, My Afterlife Guaranteed; editor of An Anthology of Modern Greek Poetry
María Espinosa presents the themes of alienation and incompleteness in alternating sequences between Eleanor, an artistic-minded, assimilated Jew from a wealthy but politically progressive family and her equally artistic daughter, Rosa. Eleanor is constantly torn between her desire for her dream of freedom and the structures that confine and define her to the world. … As with the unnamed hustler in John Rechy’s City of Night, Eleanor seeks her essence in a series of anonymous sexual encounters. Sex, the most primal currency of communication, becomes her nexus to the natural world of desire, dreams, and identity. … Dying Unfinished is more than a fascinating portrait of creative souls alienated in a materialistic world; it is a brilliant discourse in the search for the language of silence and otherness with the human soul.
– Rosa Martha Villarreal, author of The Stillness of Love and Exile, Chronicles of Air and Dreams, and Doctor Magdalena
María Espinosa’s Dying Unfinished is not a novel. It is a long poem of great lyrical beauty, a deftly-written tribute to the resilience of the human spirit, told in the intimate voices of Eleanor and Rosa, a mother once a daughter and a daughter now also a mother. Their stories resonate in the heart of every daughter who seeks her self-realization as an entity separate from her mother, and of every mother who fiercely protects her autonomy from family demands. Carving an identity from damaged tissue, from scars and wounds left us by the most significant and complex relationship in our lives requires analytical and surgical precision but also compassion and the strength of convictions. To confront memory, that merciless, relentless accountant, who always arrives with the books of rancor, regret and sorrow neatly tucked under her arms, demands an enormous amount of courage. Elusive for Eleanor till the end of her days, these are the lessons of the heart Rosa learns, for it isn’t until the fluid connectedness of mind and spirit is restored and the essence of dreams recovered that forgiveness of self and others is possible. Bravo! Gracias, María.
– Lucha Corpi, author of Eulogy for a Brown Angel and Palabras de Mediadía/Noon Words
Maria Espinosa’s daughter and mother yearn for contact - who among us does not! - and the sensation of being consumed is overwhelming. This novel takes the reader into eerie alleys of the heart with language as beautiful as the gardenia, sometimes delicate, sometimes full-bown, always pervasive and alluring.
– Clive Matson, author of Chalcedony’s First Ten Songs and Let the Crazy Child Write
A lyrical novel that takes place over three generations and that reminds us of the arduousness, and even desolation, of love relationships-between husband and wife, spouse and lover, mother and daughter. The fury at the center of the narrative is embodied in Eleanor Bernstein, whose relationships with her husband Aaron, her daughter Rosa and her countless lovers-both friends and strangers-are equal sources of elation and agony. Espinosa (Incognito: Journey of a Secret Jew, 2002, etc.) knows how to chronicle amatory ambivalence. Eleanor’s relationship to Aaron, a sculptor with an artistic temperament and numerous casual lovers, is emotionally tempestuous though sexually unexciting. Because Eleanor had grown up an imaginative child in a world of privilege, she doesn’t accommodate herself easily to the demands of adulthood and motherhood. For a while, the primary relationship in Eleanor’s life is with Heinrich, a family friend who devolves into a lover. Aaron and Eleanor raise Rosa in a hothouse of pretense and intensity, so much so that Rosa has a breakdown in early adulthood and is diagnosed as schizophrenic. After a tenuous recovery, and against the wishes of both her mother and her psychiatrist, Rosa moves to Paris and takes up with the flamboyant and charismatic Antonio. They get married two weeks before the birth of their daughter, and Eleanor voyages to Paris to witness the birth of her grandchild. But when Rosa is in the hospital awaiting delivery, Antonio first rapes his mother-in-law and then begins an affair with her. Antonio expresses his insight into Eleanor’s character by stating the obvious: that her primary mode of communication is through sex. After the turbulence and frenzy of her many sexual encounters, Eleanor ages, her body succumbing to arthritis and eventually cancer. During this time she grows more reflective and is able to reconcile some of the demands of her body with the realities of physical deterioration. A fierce novel that explores the topography of passion and grace.
From Gently Read Literature:
www.gentlyread.wordpress (May 1, 2009)
“We spend so much energy hiding from the truth,” Maria Espinosa writes in this splendid new novel, Dying Unfinished. Espinosa, refuses to allow herself, her readers, or any of the characters in this tangled and absorbing story to hide. From the first page to the last, she uncovers the hidden motives, unspoken passions, and many disappointments that too often bruise people who have been together for a long time.
The narrative is delivered by a variety of voices framed by different combinations of characters during different periods of their lives and even on different continents. The novel opens with Eleanor, a mother and daughter as well as a mistress and wife, traveling on a commuter train from suburban Long Island to meet her lover in a New York City bar. We glimpse Eleanor as a beautiful young woman as the story unfolds, being courted by Aaron, the man who becomes her lifelong husband as he attains prestige in the difficult world of modern art. Theirs is far from a simple story of adultery and retribution; Aaron is chronically adulterous and the relationship between them, while not quite “open,” seems not only to continue but to thrive in the warmth shed by their mutual deceptions.
When children come into this marriage (Jesse, Howard, and Rosa), they respond differently to their parents’ world of shadowy truths and half-told lies…. But most volatile and most important to the story, is the daughter, Rosa, several years older than her brothers and too gifted and spirited to be contained within any conventional restraints, even those of literary description.
The story of these lives and the art created by them might seem overly complex were it not for the clarity with which the narrative is told. Espinosa takes the reader directly behind the eyes of her characters; she leads us into difficult relationships (Eleanor’s with her lovers, Rosa’s with a variety of men to whom she turns for solace as she grows into a troubled womanhood). But each episode is concisely contained and crystal clear in its telling as when Rosa finds herself in a whirlpool of self-destruction leading to her becoming a desolate ward of a mental institution; these scenes are gripping, vividly depicted, but never overdone.
By the time the book comes to its conclusion, the reader knows that somehow mother and daughter have achieved the reconciliation they have always sought achieving it through motherhood and art as has Espinosa becoming the first publisher of her own mother’s poetry, which heads many of the chapters of Dying Unfinished. It is a fitting homage to the struggles of these two women and a fitting ending to a difficult yet creative journey.
— Reviewed by Mimi Albert