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THE CAREGIVER

Samuel Park

In emotionally rich storytelling this novel shows how much (or how little) we owe our families, and how life can be lived in the margins of chance.
Set in 1970s and 1980s military dictatorship Brazil, and 1990s Los Angeles.

Mara is growing up in Rio de Janeiro. Her mother Ana is her only family and her entire life. They take turns being one another's keeper. Admirably brave and recklessly impulsive, Ana seems larger than life to Mara when she navigates Rio's underbelly, hustling to hold their lives together. The imbalance of power means that one dangerous decision by Ana pushes her daughter into the corruption-riddled sphere of a powerful police chief and his family.

Eventually, the shockwaves of that single choice send Mara fleeing her mother's memory to Los Angeles. There, she becomes a caregiver of another sort, sifting through her new life for hints of the past, and finally learning that not everything is what it seems.

Told with vivid imagery and subtle poignancy, The Caregiver is a moving and profound story that asks us to investigate who we areas children and parents, immigrants and citizens, and ultimately, humans looking for vital connectivity.

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.
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Published 2018-09-25 by Simon & Schuster

Comments

The heart of this coming-of-age tale lies in Ana's stint as an accessory to rebellion, as she risks her life, provokes overwhelming horror in Mara and blunders into trauma that will haunt them both for the rest of their days...The backdrop of Brazil in political turmoil deepens the suspense, and Park takes his time drawing out the truth of Ana's actions and their consequences...Park's final novel hums with quiet importance and thwarted promise.

This moving posthumously published novel by Park (This Burns My Heart) examines the relationship between a mother and daughter after years of mutual misunderstanding.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.

A filigreed novel that follows hospice worker Mara from a dangerous childhood in 1970's Brazil to present-day L.A.

A ferocious page-turner with deep wells of compassion for the struggles of the living - and the sins of the dead.

This novel, finished at the end of his own life, is, among many other things, a meditation on mortality. It's also brilliant and suspenseful and heartbreaking.

Bonnie Tyler's song about love and darkness and falling apart, "Total Eclipse of the Heart" pairs well with the forthcoming (9/25/18) powerhouse of a novel from Samuel Park, The Caregiver. I finished this in one sitting because I literally couldn't stop reading Mara's story about what she thought she knew about her mother growing up and what really took place between them in her native Brazil before she emigrated to the States.

This luminous mother-daughter saga marks a posthumous gem from Park, who died of stomach cancer last year.

This posthumously published novel by Samuel Park ("This Burns My Heart") jumps between impoverished Copacabana and affluent Bel Air and considers, via a codependent mother-daughter relationship, larger questions of family, identity and the true meaning of caregiving. Tragically, Park, an associate professor of creative writing at Columbia College Chicago, died of stomach cancer in 2017 shortly after finishing this novel. His lyrical voice is present in these pages.

Visual, almost hypnotic language creates a memorable story of what it means to truly care.

It's bittersweet to crack open The Caregiver, Samuel Park's long-awaited follow-up to his luminous, romantic epic set in Korea, This Burns My Heart...It's a tender mother-daughter story that alternates between 1980s Brazil and present day Los Angeles...As chapters alternate between Mara's past in Brazil and her present-day life in California, Park explores what it means to care for someone and the beauty of human resilience and survival.

Park's latest hauntingly examines the codependent mother-daughter bond amid complicated layers created by the pursuit of truth.Affecting.

A Brazilian immigrant finds work caring for a young woman dying of stomach cancer--the disease that claimed this young novelist's life last year. Lovely and heartbreaking.

A novel both gripping and tender, told through a lyrical, thoughtful voice that enchanted me from the first page. Mara's unique story would not let me go.