The Rainforest
Alicia Steimberg author Andrea G Labinger translator Andrea G Labinger editor
Format:Paperback
Publisher:University of Nebraska Press
Published:1st Sep '06
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back
A lonely woman seeks a connection to nature at a Brazillian spa.
Tells a story of a lonely woman who seeks a connection at a Brazilian spa. This work offers the reader fresh definitions of happiness and mature love - or perhaps the reassurance that in life, nothing is ever quite as terrible as one fears or quite as glorious as one remembers.
For middle-aged Cecilia, the rainforest represents both solace and tenuously controlled danger, as she discovers when she follows the same path each day from her hotel at a Brazilian spa into the surrounding jungle. Although her daily forays are designed to help leave her painful past behind, Cecilia’s thoughts return to her deceased husband, her drug-addicted son, and her own place in the world. These thoughts are her only company until the present intrudes once more in the unlikely form of a fellow patient at the spa, a North American man who might represent a second chance.
In The Rainforest, the award-winning novelist Alicia Steimberg offers the reader new definitions of happiness and mature love—or perhaps simply the reassurance that in life, nothing is ever quite as terrible as one fears or quite as glorious as one remembers.
"Labinger's melodic translation lyrically enhances Steimberg's potently symbolic portrait of a woman in transition."—Booklist
"From Argentine novelist Steimberg . . . comes a poetically written and beautifully translated perspective on personal happiness, solace, and mature love."—Library Journal
"In a novel as fragmented and verdant as memory itself, Argentine author Steimberg (Call Me Magdalena) creates a troubled Argentine writer, a widow in her late 50s who seeks comfort and recovery at a convalescent spa in the lush Brazilian rain forest. In scraps of tortured writing, dreams and unbidden recollections, Cecilia examines her relationships with three men: her deceased second husband, Dardo; Federico, the violent drug-addicted son she has cut out of her life; and Steve, a biologist from Los Angeles with whom she falls in love. . . . The question this reflective novel finally poses is whether Cecilia is strong enough to risk the possibility of a future with a man who is, ultimately, as imperfect and mortal as she is."—Publishers Weekly
“Steimberg’s eloquent and engrossing tale flows smoothly. . . . Steimberg has created an unforgettable protagonist who captures the sympathies of the reader as she attempts to overcome the tragedies of her life.” —Roberta Gordenstein, MultiCultural Review
“Steimberg’s prose is extraordinary: by turns earthy and ethereal, it is always compelling.”—Tower Light (Towson, MD)
ISBN: 9780803293298
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: 181g
142 pages