Call Me Magdalena (Latin American Women Writers) - Softcover

Steimberg, Alicia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0803292821 ISBN 13: 9780803292826

Publisher: Bison Books, 2001

Synopsis

Erotic entanglements, startling revelations, a furtive intruder, even a possible murder? Not at all what the students of Mind Control class envisioned when they gathered on a ranch outside Buenos Aires for a relaxing weekend. But here nothing is quite what it seems, least of all Magdalena herself, who while recounting the weekend's events, changes her name as often as she changes her mind.

 

Within the taut framework of a murder mystery, Alicia Steimberg weaves a tale far more concerned with who-is-it than with whodunit. In what is probably the celebrated author's most interesting and complex novel, Magdalena conducts us through her tortuous childhood as an Argentine Jew and through her doubts about morality and mortality, the existence of God, and the amorphous nature of identity. Animated by Steimberg's lively dialogue and wit, this eccentric tour of some of the more pressing questions about gender, identity, and existence itself is finally as intriguing and suspenseful as the mysteries large and small, otherworldly and mundane, that it invites us to contemplate.

About this title

About the Author

Born in Buenos Aires in 1933, the descendant of Eastern European Jews, Alicia Steimberg is a well-known figure in the world of Argentine letters. She is the winner of many prestigious literary prizes, including the 1992 Planeta Prize for Call Me Magdalena. Andrea G. Labinger is a professor of Spanish and honors director at the University of La Verne in Claremont, California. She has translated many works, including Steimberg's Musicians and Watchmakers.

Reviews

Steimberg's simple and evocative prose distinguishes this 1992 Planeta Prize-winning novel about the quest of a young Argentine woman to understand her history and her heritage. Though described by the publisher as a "taut mystery," the meditative tale is neither taut it ambles and wanders and digresses nor a true mystery. The narrator, a young woman named Magdalena (which may be her real name or one she has taken for convenience), ponders such questions as: Who am I? and How do I solve myself? She takes a class called Mind Control, which tries to help students deal with the modern world, in this case Buenos Aires on the verge of the millennium. A wealthy patron, Juan Antonio, invites the class to his estancia. The story of his life, wife and lovers forms a less than gripping subplot, standing in contrast to Magdalena's childhood memories, which form the book's core. The granddaughter of Russian Jews who emigrated to Argentina, and the daughter of parents indifferent to Judaism who embrace Argentine society, she is in a kind of cultural limbo, caught between one world she cannot forget and another she wants to embrace. Walker Percy once said that being a Catholic and a Southerner was an almost irresolvable conflict. For Magdalena, the impossible clash is between European Jewish culture and contemporary Roman Catholic Latin American society. In the end, her warm and amusing recollections and her illuminating progress toward self-knowledge more than compensate for the meandering plot. (Oct.)
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Winner of the 1992 Planeta Prize, Steimberg's second novel (after Musicians and Watchmakers, a fictional account of an Argentine Jewish family) is a complex murder mystery narrated by the middle-aged Magdalena, who uses her storytelling confessionals to explore faith in God, romantic entanglements, and religious and national identity. Magdalena's confusion over how to define herself as an Argentine Jew is playfully and effectively drawn, but because she refers to herself by various names throughout the text, it is difficult to know who she really is and, often, who is speaking. Labinger, who also translated Steimberg's first book, attempts to maintain some of this work's flavor by using various inside jokes based on the Spanish language. Unfortunately, these will be lost on the English-only reader. Appropriate for academic and public libraries. Lee McQueen, Univ. at Buffalo, NY
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bison Books
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0803292821
• ISBN 13: 9780803292826
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 137