Yo nunca te prometí la eternidad. (I Never Promised You Eternity)
Reviewed by Carmen Güiraldes, Brooklyn, NY -- Críticas, 3/15/2008
Mercado, Tununa.
Argentina: Planeta. 2005. 360p. ISBN 950-49-1335-0. pap. $19.95. HISTORICAL FICTION
Born in Argentina, Mercado was forced into exile twice for political reasons. She first lived in France and then in Mexico; and her work often depicts exile as a place “where a sense of melancholy predominates” [En estado de memoria (In State of Memory), 1990]. Winner of the 2007 Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz Prize at Guadalajara’s Book Fair, Nunca te prometí la eternidad links several stories of persecution and exile, starting in Europe and ending in Mexico. Mercado got the idea for the book when she came across the diary of his friend Pedro Preux mother, Sonia, which chronicles the fate of a Jewish woman who barely escaped the Nazi regime and was married to a Spanish civil war soldier. Written in telegraphic style but filled with excruciating details, Sonia’s memories go over the days that defined her life: her escape from Paris as the Nazis advanced, the loss of her son in a desperate crowd, the search for him, the waiting for her husband’s return from war, the family reunion, and the final trip to Mexico. Mercado rewrites Sonia’s story, guided by an unstoppable curiosity and giving expression to her own feelings of solitude as an expatriate. The result is a winding plot that sometimes labors to combine fiction with autobiography around the heroic figure of a woman. But it’s also a vivid testament of the quirks of fate during the first half of last century in Europe. Recommended for public libraries and bookstores.
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