Unknown Destination - Hardcover

Rasker, Maya

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0345446763 ISBN 13: 9780345446763

Publisher: Ballantine Books, 2002

Synopsis

In the realization that my language is powerless to describe what has happened in the seven years since I first met her, I am compelled to recount the story of my wife, the beautiful Raya Mira Salomon, who disappeared on the night of August 31, 1997, our daughter’s sixth birthday, at the age of thirty-seven. . . .

It was a hot, rainy summer evening when Gideon’s enigmatic wife, Raya Mira, with painted lips and her hair gathered up in a single clip, went out to get a pack of cigarettes at a café around the corner and never returned.

One year later no trace of her has been found.

Now Gideon sits down to open a suitcase she left behind. Hoping to put his wife to rest at last and move on with his life, he discovers that she remains very much alive inside the cracked seams of the suitcase, which is full of childhood postcards, letters, photographs, and scraps of paper with jotted down thoughts.

Instead of assuming the role of widower, Gideon renews the promise he made with her seven years ago on the eve of their marriage: to be faithful to her until the end. So what was intended as a liberation becomes a pact more powerful than death, more intense than love, more implacable than fidelity.

Unknown Destination is a haunting, unforgettable first novel revealing one man’s emotional journey through deduction and madness as he tries to make sense of his wife’s inexplicable disappearance. It is a lyrical and elegant debut that eloquently demonstrates how a battered soul can learn to live with a tragic past–and make peace with the shattering truth.

About this title

About the Author

Maya Rasker studied German linguistics and literature at the University of Utrecht. Unknown Destination, her first novel, was longlisted for the Netherlands’s most prestigious literary award, the Golden Owl 2001, as well as for the ECI Book Award. She received the Golden Dog-ear Award 2001 for best literary debut of the year. She currently lives in Holland with her two daughters.

Translated by Barbara Fasting

From the Back Cover

Winner of the award for the bestselling literary debut of 2001–and nominated for several other awards in the Netherlands, the internationally acclaimed novel Unknown Destination at last arrives in America.

“Eerie, romantic, and unsettling, Maya Rasker’s novel unfolds like a great ghost story. In this case, the ghost haunting these pages is the memory of a marriage, and Rasker is an expert at peeling back the layers of mystery and unspoken secrets that exist even–or perhaps especially–in the hearts of those we love the most. Unknown Destination is a terrific novel.”
–DAN CHAON
2001 National Book Award finalist and author of Among the Missing

“[Rasker] manages to build suspense out of the mystery of Raya’s disappearance. In doing that, she hasn’t written a simple suspense novel, but rather a precise research into honor, motherhood, and fatherhood in a time in which these terms have become empty.”
–Der Spiegel

Reviews

Rasker's thoroughly glum novel, winner of Holland's Golden Dog-Ear Award, is a psychological study of love and obsession with others and with one's self. Gideon Salomon, a photographer, is mourning the loss of his beautiful wife, Raya Mira, who disappeared on their dead daughter Lizzy's sixth birthday: she went to her favorite bar, had a whiskey and apparently walked away forever. Gideon recounts the story of their meeting, their marriage and the birth of Lizzy, as well as his inability to understand his wife's metaphysical leanings. Raya Mira is a poet and writer who occasionally takes to the sea with fishermen to absorb experiences, returning to write "magnificent short stories for obscure literary journals." It is during one of these expeditions that five-year-old Lizzy, left behind with Gideon, falls through thin ice and goes into a coma. Raya Mira returns and resumes her role as mother, wrestling to resolve the conflict between her identity as a mother and an artist, and wondering which should take precedence: "Will there never again be a day when I coincide with myself, with no one else in between?" Dysfunctional family neuroses run rampant in this low-key exploration of obsession: Gideon's mother killed herself after suffering through a loveless marriage, and Raya Mira's mother was coldly dissociated from her daughter. Gideon's and Raya Mira's dour self-absorption makes them thoroughly unbearable; Lizzy is the sole appealing character and the ugly surprise ending is only moving because of that appeal.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

On what would have been her daughter's sixth birthday, artist Raya Mira Salomon goes out to buy cigarettes and never returns. She leaves behind a suitcase filled with photographs and writings that her husband, Gideon, opens a year later and reads so that he can put her disappearance behind him. Instead, he falls in love with her all over again and narrates how he first met her and became smitten. In addition, we learn that when their daughter, Lizzy, turned four years old, she died mysteriously. An important clue to that mystery is Raya's fierce defense of Susan Smith, the South Carolina woman who drowned her two young sons. In a letter to Gideon, found in the suitcase, Raya writes that "motherhood is life's greatest lie. It is an illusion that must be kept alive at all costs." She concludes that having children and being a woman artist are not compatible. This provocative, haunting story is the first novel by Rasker, who has won prestigious awards in her native Holland. Recommended for general fiction collections as well as libraries with a feminist readership. Lisa Rohrbaugh, East Palestine Memorial P.L., OH

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Rasker's melancholy debut is the deeply moving story of a man whose wife mysteriously vanishes on their daughter's sixth birthday. In anguish over Raya's disappearance, Gideon Salomon experiences a psychotic break and retreats into his memories of their life together. He relives his first meeting with Raya, their marriage, their trip to visit her mother in the small village in Holland in which Raya grew up, the birth of their daughter, and more, all the while struggling to unravel the stories that Raya spun for him and to discover the truth behind them. Not that he hasn't already, for, unhappy with herself and her life, Raya had continually reinvented herself, searching for the story she wanted to live, and Gideon, bewildered by her unhappiness, analyzed her stories in the hope that he would finally understand her. This poignant novel is skillfully written, with complex, intriguing characters that reflect Rasker's insight into human nature. Bonnie Johnston
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Ballantine Books
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0345446763
• ISBN 13: 9780345446763
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224