The Memory Room: A Novel

In this truly original debut novel, Mary Rakow offers a portrait of lost innocence and one woman's choice to see beauty in the world even as she faces the darkest side of human nature. With the help of friendship, music, art, the Psalms and the poetry of Paul Celan, we watch as she saves herself and slowly finds a way to a new world of faith and love. The sentences in this work, each their own masterpiece, manage, when strung together, to connect the dots of human… (more)

In this truly original debut novel, Mary Rakow offers a portrait of lost innocence and one woman's choice to see beauty in the world even as she faces the darkest side of human nature. With the help of friendship, music, art, the Psalms and the poetry of Paul Celan, we watch as she saves herself and slowly finds a way to a new world of faith and love. The sentences in this work, each their own masterpiece, manage, when strung together, to connect the dots of human cruelty and salvation, and the result is a tremulous novel, symphonic, finely crafted, and unforgettable.