The House of Forgetting: A Novel - Hardcover

Sáenz, Benjamin Alire

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0060187387 ISBN 13: 9780060187385

Publisher: Harper, 1997

Synopsis

From the author of the highly acclaimed literary novel Carry Me Like Water comes a stunning, dramatic psychological thriller that delivers on every level and reaffirms Luis Arrea's claim that Benjamin Sàenz is "writer with greatness in him."

In The House of Forgetting, seven-year-old Gloria Santos is taken by Thomas Blacker from the barrio of El Paso, Texas, to Chicago. There, in the home of the respected writer and academic, Gloria is raised to be refined, educated young woman with an appreciation of literature, music, and fine cooking. For more than twenty years she is confined to Blacker's house and only occasionally allowed in the garden he so meticulously keeps. She becomes, it seems, like his flowers--lovingly tended, but utterly at his mercy.

As she reaches adulthood, Gloria grows more and more aware that her situation is in unacceptable, and she finds herself confronting her future and the man who has shaped her past. She struggles to distinguish between love and obsession, between gratitude and obligation, and, ultimately, between betrayal and self-preservation. Naive, frightened, and caught between a world she hates and one she does not know, Gloria must summon all her courage and moral strength or risk losing the life she longs for.

In the lyrical prose for which he is known, Benjamin Sàenz offers a haunting psychological drama that examines one woman's search for her identity and explores what it means to have freedom. The House of Forgetting is a riveting tale of abduction, lost innocence, and revenge--a page-turner in the truest sense, a novel that longers in memory, and one that establishes Benjamin Sàenz as one of the most versatile, insightful writers working today.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

"Compels a reader to turn the page and dive into the next."
--The Dallas Morning News

"A POETIC AND FORCEFUL NOVEL."
--Oscar Hijuelos
Pulitzer Prize-winning author of
The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love

"GRITTY . . . Sáenz throws himself with gusto--and with a romantic, breathless style--into a probe of the kidnapping's causes and effects."
--Los Angeles Times

"So compelling it almost calls for a marathon read-at-one-sitting experience. . . . Sáenz captures his readers with carefully honed lyrical prose and a gripping psychological plot that explores the intricate love-hate relationship between captor and prisoner. This book will linger in memory long after the final page is read."
--The Rocky Mountain News

From the Inside Flap:

oria Santos accepts a ride with a charming stranger--and loses the only world she has ever known. Abducted and kept hidden by a respected academic for twenty long years, Gloria is raised in the shadow of her captor's dark, disturbed mind. She enters womanhood believing that life demands servitude, love means obsession, and fear is all-encompassing.

Driven to violence to free herself, Gloria is caught between a world she hates and one she does not know. Now she must find the strength to bury her twisted past--or risk losing her newfound freedom forever. . . .

About this edition

• Publisher: Harper
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0060187387
• ISBN 13: 9780060187385
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352