September 12, 2011
In this haunting and surreal depiction of the military dictatorship that gripped Argentina in the late 1970s after the death of Juan Peron, Martínez (1934–2010) explores the devastation of those left behind when their loved ones “disappeared” in the Dirty War. The story is told through the lens of cartographer Emilia Dupuy, the daughter of a high-ranking adviser during the military junta. Now 60 years old and living in New Jersey, Emilia one day sees her husband, Simón, who she was sure “had been dead thirty years” at the hands of military officials (and, she suspects, on the orders of her father). Simón looks exactly as he did 30 years earlier, “had not aged a day,” and still loves Emilia. She takes him back to her apartment where they reconnect, and then she goes away with him, alarming her friends. Told from the perspective of a New Jersey writer and professor to whom Emilia has told her tale, the novel weaves Emilia’s life without Simón together with the week of their beguiling reunion. Martínez (The Tango Singer) questions the ideas of identity, geography, existence, and reality with fluid prose and finely detailed imagery that throws into relief the brutality and fear of this dark era.
November 1, 2011
For his last novel, the Argentinian writer (1934–2010) constructed a maze, at the heart of which is a woman who refuses to give her husband up for dead. An Argentinian woman, dismissing eyewitness accounts of her husband's execution by the military dictatorship, embarks on a 30-year search for him and is rewarded by his reappearance. Emilia Dupuy and Simón Cardoso, both cartography students, meet in Buenos Aires. They are instant soul mates, marrying in 1976, soon after the military coup. Emilia's father is the publisher of a political magazine and the coup's most able propagandist. The new president dines at the Dupuy mansion. Simón criticizes the use of torture. Dupuy is furious; his son-in-law must be punished. The young couple are sent to a remote town on a mapping assignment. Both are arrested. Emilia is released; Simón is never seen again. He has joined "the disappeared," the regime's notorious hallmark. Emilia sets off on a wild goose chase that takes her to Rio, Caracas and Mexico City, after having been viciously humiliated by Dupuy, a true monster, while caring for her senile mother; she eventually settles in a New Jersey town, working as a cartographer. Enter a new character, one of Emilia's Jersey neighbors, a professor and novelist, evidently Martínez himself. In a postmodern twist, she is the protagonist in his novel in progress. The author's interest in her life story somehow sparks Simón's return, providing a happy ending for the reunited lovers. These events are embedded in a metaphysical density: mapping and disappearing are the novel's two poles. The operatic quality of Argentinian life is given its full due, while the overreaching of the fascists receives a priceless putdown when Orson Welles meets Dupuy in Los Angeles. Ultimately, Martínez counteracts the black magic of the "disappearances" with his own novelist's magic: the resurrection of one of the victims. Justice of sorts is done in this absorbing finale of a distinguished career.
(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)
September 1, 2011
In Highland Park, NJ (near Rutgers Univ., where the author once taught), Emilia Dupuy spots her husband, Simon Cardoso, who has been dead 30 years, wearing the same clothes, looking 30 years younger than he should be, and even toting the same leather bag he carried when he was allegedly murdered in Tucuman, Argentina, by government forces. Despite eyewitness accounts of his murder, Emilia has waited for her husband to return, the very definition of purgatory as a "wait whose end we cannot know." The author soon intervenes directly, purporting to tell Emilia's story firsthand as a narrator. Between the initial encounter and the final explanation, Martinez fills the pages with the saga of Emilia's family--her marriage and career, her mother's insanity, her father's collusion with the authoritarian government, her loyalty to her sister--while blending fiction and history. Unlike other novels that deal with the "disappeared" during Argentina's Dirty War, however, Martinez glosses over the details of the atrocities and focuses instead on the historical implications of the era. VERDICT The author of the hugely successful Santa Evita has written another well-paced novel, despite the seeming digressions, verging on fantasy, but with a denouement that may disappoint some readers as a cop-out.--Lawrence Olszewski, OCLC Lib., Dublin, OH
Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
November 15, 2011
Emilia Dupuy has been waiting for the return of her husband, Simn, since he disappeared 30 years ago, when Argentina was under military rule and the young couple ran afoul of the authorities while on a cartographic expedition in remote Tucumn. Now, finally, she has found him, in a chain restaurant in suburban New Jersey. Oddly, he has not aged a day. She takes him home; they drink wine and order Japanese food and listen to the sublime jazz of Keith Jarrett. But making up for lost time means embracing that which is not there, and as Emilia reveals the story of her lifeher father's cruelty, her husband's disappearance, her years of waiting and mapmakingher novelist friend is reminded of Parmenides, who knew that being also hides in the folds of nothingness. The final novel of the late Mart-nez (Santa Evita, 1999; The Tango Singer; 2007), this one beautifully combines unsubtle, hard-hitting commentary on Argentine history with a touching ghost story about love, loss, and death.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)
October 1, 2014
In the author's final novel, Emilia suddenly spies her husband exactly as he was when he was arrested and disappeared 30 years earlier.
Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.