Rosarita by Anita Desai
In Anita Desai's latest novel, the reader is directly implicated in a magical realist fable of identity and generational trauma
Rosarita, Anita Desai’s latest novella, takes readers on a moving journey from India to Mexico, in a story about haunting pasts and an illusive present. Strikingly vivid not only because of its evocative writing and rich imagery, but also because Rosarita speaks directly to you – the reader – this book is the literary equivalent of a lucid dream, a surreal and deeply personal experience.
Bonita (you) is a young woman who travels to San Miguel de Allende to study Spanish, but finds herself swept by memories — real, fabricated, individual and collective — from the moment a mysterious character recognises her as the daughter of an Indian painter who travelled to the same small town many years before. She may be the spitting image of that woman, but Bonita’s mother was not a painter, and she never visited Mexico. That is not the woman Bonita knew or remembers, but how well can you trust your memory?
Reminiscent of Carlos Fuentes’ Aura in its setting, dreamlike atmosphere, and elegant use of the second person point of view, Rosarita offers a unique approach to magical realism. The parallelism between mother and daughter mirrors that of the two countries: India and Mexico share a violent colonial past in common, and Bonita, much like these nations, struggles (often painfully) to construct a defined identity from personal and generational trauma.