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Searching... Stayton Public Library | PARK Samuel | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Salem Main Library | Park, S. | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
A FALL 2018 HIGHLY ANTICIPATED SELECTION BY * PEOPLE * O, THE OPRAH MAGAZINE * ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY * VULTURE * CHICAGO TRIBUNE * THE MILLIONS * FAST COMPANY * SEATTLE TIMES * ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH * BOOKPAGE * BOOKRIOT * CONDE NAST TRAVELER *
"[A] luminous mother-daughter saga."-- ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
"Lovely and heartbreaking."-- PEOPLE
"A beautiful testament to [Park's] extraordinary talents as a storyteller...A ferocious page-turner."-- KIRKUS REVIEWS (STARRED REVIEW)
From the critically acclaimed author of This Burns My Heart comes a gorgeous, emotionally wise tale about a daughter who unearths the hidden life of her enigmatic mother.
Mara Alencar's mother Ana is her moon, her sun, her stars. Ana, a struggling voice-over actress, is an admirably brave and recklessly impulsive woman who does everything in her power to care for her little girl. With no other family or friends her own age, Ana eclipses Mara's entire world. They take turns caring for each other--in ways big and small.
Their arrangement begins to unravel when Ana becomes involved with a civilian rebel group attempting to undermine the city's torturous Police Chief, who rules over 1980s Rio de Janeiro with terrifying brutality. Ana makes decisions that indelibly change their shared life. When Mara is forced to escape, she emigrates to California as an undocumented immigrant and finds employment as a caregiver to a young woman dying of stomach cancer. It's here that she begins to grapple with her turbulent past and starts to uncover vital truths--about her mother, herself, and what it means to truly take care of someone.
Told with vivid imagery and subtle poignancy, The Caregiver is a moving and profound story that asks us to investigate who we are--as children and parents, immigrants and citizens, and ultimately, humans looking for vital connectivity
Author Notes
Samuel Park was an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Columbia College Chicago. He graduated from Stanford University and the University of Southern California, where he earned his doctorate. He is the author of the novella Shakespeare's Sonnets and the writer-director of a short film of the same name, which was an official selection of numerous domestic and international film festivals. He is also the author of the novels This Burns My Heart and The Caregiver . His nonfiction has appeared in The New York Times . Born in Brazil and raised in Los Angeles, he split his time between Chicago and Los Angeles. In April 2017, Samuel Park died of stomach cancer at the age of 41 shortly after finishing The Caregiver.
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
This moving posthumously published novel by Park (This Burns My Heart) examines the relationship between a mother and daughter after years of mutual misunderstanding. Ana, a voice-over actress, struggles to provide for her six-year-old daughter, Mara, in late 1970s Rio de Janeiro. Desperate for money, Ana takes on a dangerous job with revolutionaries seeking to overthrow the corrupt police chief. What immediately transpires remains opaque to Mara-and to the reader-but it becomes apparent to Ana that she must separate from her daughter to save her from retaliation. Mara, with the help of her mother, escapes to California and years later finds work caring for a woman who's dying of stomach cancer. During their time together, Mara begins to understand Ana in new ways as she considers her role as a caretaker. Although the story occasionally lacks believability-particularly surrounding the plot against the police chief-readers will relish the wistful yearning that Park evokes. This beautiful novel is a moving meditation on the mutual dependence and unbreakable bonds of family. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A young Brazilian woman arrives undocumented in Los Angeles, where she becomes a home caregiver for a patient who dredges up painful memories of her mother.When Mara Alencar is 8 years old, her mother, a voice-over actress, is drawn into an anti-government plot that will change their lives forever. Mara knows Ana Alencar is "beautiful because of the way men on the street turned to stare at her," but she is also an uncanny actress willing to scrap for their family of two. Ana's determination to put food on the table leads her to accept a dubious job acting for the student guerrillasa con meant to lure the loathed Police Chief Lima from his post. Park (This Burns My Heart, 2011, etc.) weaves the terrifying story of Ana's mission with Mara's new life in America, decades later. Mara struggles to fly under the radar as an undocumented caregiver in Los Angeles, where her primary patient, Kathryn, suffers from stomach cancer. Kathryn's fear of dying while still in her 40s blurs the boundaries between employer and employed, the living and gravely ill. At a party, Kathryn even introduces Mara as her adopted daughter, telling another guest, "I didn't want to raise a child, but I wanted one to take care of me in my old age." Park himself was diagnosed with stomach cancer in 2014, in his 30s, and died shortly after finishing this bookmaking this his final novel. It's a beautiful testament to his extraordinary talents as a storyteller. In prose that rings clear and true, Park shepherds his characters through the streets of Copacabana to the posh hills of Bel Air. This is an elegy that reads, in some moments, like a thrillerand, in others, like a meditation on what it means to be alive. "It's not because I love to dance, or because I'll miss the music of Bono, or because I haven't been to Vienna yet," Kathryn says of her desire to live. "There's no why I want to stay. I just do."A ferocious page-turner with deep wells of compassion for the struggles of the livingand the sins of the dead. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
At 26, Mara is the titular caregiver for a lonely woman in her early forties with stomach cancer, who insists she'll bequeath Mara her exclusive Bel Air home upon her impending death. Mara is already too familiar with loss, having grown up in Rio de Janeiro as the only child of a chimerical single mother, Ana, for whom she was as much caretaker as she was taken care of by her. While surviving under Brazil's military dictatorship, Ana's talent for movie voice-over work gets her hired by a rebel group for a risky mission. What follows will haunt Mara always, precipitating her eventual escape to California. In alternating sections marked by Mara's different ages, Park's (This Burns My Heart, 2011) tale hauntingly examines the codependent mother-daughter bond amid complicated layers created by the pursuit of truth. Beyond the affecting pages, Park's own April 2017 death of stomach cancer at 41 is a somber factor. The inclusion of his New York Times essay, I Had a 9 Percent Chance. Plus Hope, at the book's end makes this an especially melancholic experience.--Terry Hong Copyright 2018 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Park (This Burns My Heart), who completed this work prior to his death from stomach cancer in 2017 at age 41, was born in Brazil and raised in Southern California, and his protagonists are also Brazilians now living in the Golden State. The novel opens in the 1990s with 26-year-old Mara Alencar serving as caregiver in Bel Air for Kathryn Weatherly, a woman in her early forties with stomach cancer. Yet Mara's life and relationship with her employer are ultimately secondary to the main story line, which concerns her life growing up in Brazil. A young Mara narrates being raised by her single mother, Ana, a voice-over actress, describing their relationship, Ana's ties to a feared police chief, and Ana's helping a gang of guerrillas by distracting the police in an attempt to free some of the guerrillas' imprisoned members. Eventually, to escape danger, Maya must venture to America alone at age 16. VERDICT Park's richly reflective last novel deftly defines the love between a parent and child-or any other caregiver-and demonstrates human resiliency whatever the circumstances. Of great appeal to any audience.-Shirley Quan, Orange Cty. P.L., Santa Ana, CA © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.