MEMORY & DESIRE
by
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Daria's father, Ivan Khazmanov, had the kind of charisma that could both attract and repel. He was a brash, brazen man whose charm lay in his seeming simplicity, a persona he projected through a cultivated buffoonery. On first meeting, he'd pull a man to him and declare, "I'm Russian. You know this? In Russia men kiss men." Or, he'd bluster, "I'm strong like bull," in imitation of Popeye, his favorite cartoon character. Daria's first inkling of the truth about her father came with her reading of IN INNOCIENT BLOOD, recommended by Dr. Freid. "Why this cheap thriller?" she protested. When obscure recollections began to surface, she blurted, "sounds like we're talking about incest." "Tell me that not it," she demanded.
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About the Book
The autobiographical novel,Memory and Desire, traces the gradual but inexorable disintegration of a family. At the outset, when thirty-nine year old Daria Khasmanov recovers memories of her father’s prolonged sexual assaults, she cannot connect the parent she knows today with the predator of her recollections. And she persuades herself that the past can be divided from the present. Her determination to thereby save the family, however, is soon shattered when she is overcome by a sudden, irresistible compulsion to tell all. Th us begins a chain of events which, over the course of seventeen years, leads to the inevitable dissolution of the familial ties she had long labored to preserve.
About the Author
Luisa Smith was born in Siberia, Russia in 1944 where her Jewish parents survived Nazi persecution. They arrived in New York in 1951 where the author grew up and earned her B.A., and M.A. degrees in English Literature at Queens College. She is currently living in San Jose, CA. with her husband.