The Memory Room - Tapa dura

A women traumatized by her past creates a new identity for herself with the help of friendship, music, art, the Psalms, and the poetry of Paul Celan. A first novel. 20,000 first printing.

A symphonic novel-in-verse about evil, recovery, and redemption.. This is a novel about a woman coming back from Hell. Burdened with memories as horrific as they are undeniable, she must construct a new self, one able to bear stimulations not even imagined by the self she has left behind. With the grace of friendship, music, art, the Psalms and the poetry of Paul Celan, she slowly finds her way to a new world of faith and love."In her suspenseful, poetic, mysterious, and profound novel The Memory Room, Mary Rakow addresses the big question-how do we live with our knowledge of evil? And then what do we do with this knowledge, and how can we reconcile it with an equally profound awareness of the depth of the world's beauty and the possibility of faith? Approaching these fundamental issues not as a philosopher but as an artist using a subtle poet's touch, she explores the great paradoxes of the human condition without simplification or denial. The Memory Room marks the rarest of occurrences-the debut of a literary master."-Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander