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Book Review: Draining the Sea

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  • Book Review: Draining the Sea

    Kirkus Reviews
    January 2008



    DRAINING THE SEA

    FICTION


    Whiting Writers' Award-winner Marcom (The Daydreaming Boy, 2004,
    etc.) obsessively explores the atrocities committed during the
    Guatemalan civil war.


    An unnamed middle-aged man, overweight and with kidney problems,
    drives around Los Angeles picking up the carcasses of dead dogs. He
    eats great quantities of fatty foods, he drinks, he watches TV. But
    mostly he remembers, or imagines, a woman named Marta from the
    village of Acul in Guatemala. Marta died in 1982 after being
    tortured. Her hands were cut off. She was mutilated and raped.
    Perhaps the man was involved in killing her. Perhaps he was her
    torturer. Or her lover. Or he is imagining her existence and
    experiencing generalized guilt. The man, who is half-Armenian, also
    reflects on his mother's memories of the 1915 genocide. But mostly he
    talks to Marta, spilling forth his worst sexual fantasies in coarsely
    graphic detail. Or are they fantasies? As lovemaking and torture are
    described and redescribed, the images pile up into a confusing
    nightmare. What happens in the first few pages is embellished, then
    embellished again. There is little forward motion; Marcom is not
    going for a story. The book is an indictment of Guatemalan dictators,
    U.S. expansionism and American values in general. The text includes a
    historical timeline and photographs of Los Angeles, Acul and the Der
    Zor Desert. Marcom's language is always fervent, whether gorgeous or
    foul. But slogging through page after page of atrocities becomes
    grueling.


    As Marcom notes in her peculiar diction, "In paradise the suffering
    is real and you no more real than this unreadable and unread book
    (will you read it, Reader? Do you?)". Despite good intentions, most
    won't.

    Publication Date: 3/13/2008 0:00:00
    Publisher: Riverhead
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