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Save Send Delete (2012)

by Danusha V. Goska(Favorite Author)

4.13 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

1846949866 (ISBN13: 9781846949869)

languge

English

genre

Poetry

publisher

John Hunt Publishing

review 1: As I neared the end of Danusha Goska's Save Send Delete, I started pondering what rating to assign it. I thought I would give it four stars, but when I finished the last page and my Kindle prompted me for a rating, I found myself giving it five. This is not a perfect book, and if five stars imply perfection, I apologize -- but it is a fascinating, moving, and profoundly thought-provoking work, and I was quite reluctant to admit it was over. (I am now rereading a book I could recite in my sleep, as a transition to moving on.)If I understood the Preface correctly, Save Send Delete is a lightly fictionalized memoir, an account of an email exchange that became a virtual relationship between a woman and a man. The woman: Mira, a Polish-American Catholic, widely traveled, a PhD ... moreand teacher with serious health problems that have wreaked havoc with her personal and professional life. The man: Rand (short for a long name-plus-title), a well-off British aristocrat, author and raconteur, known for consistently defending atheism as superior to any form of religion.The title reflects the form of the narrative. We see Mina's emails to Rand, as well as the emails she doesn't send (deletes) and those about which she vacillates before sending (saves). We are left to infer the content and style of Rand's replies. We are also shown exchanges between Mina and a friend, Amanda, about whom there is more to say -- which I'll refrain from saying. Mira's and Rand's correspondence focuses on the subjects of religion and what one could call supernatural experience, but through that lens, it examines a wide range of subjects: suffering, love, hate, friendship, and how one can and cannot help one's fellows, to name a few.Among the insights to which this book led me, by what indirect route I cannot recall: while I am an agnostic, and find all established religions unconvincing, I could not have written my novel Wander Home, set in a rather enticing afterlife, if I were absolutely convinced that no such afterlife could possibly exist.So why do I call the book imperfect? At times, I felt that Mina ran on longer than necessary, or repeated herself in ways I could do without. These were minor and transitory annoyances, and they do not prevent me from heartily recommending this book.
review 2: Save Send Delete is an epistolary novel for the digital age. Mira is an adjunct professor at an American university (read poorly-paid, insecure). She sees a well-known pundit on a TV show expounding the case for his own atheism and e-mails him. Her e-mail is witty, combative and insulting, comparing their relevant statuses, and insisting on her right to equal time to present her own case as a questioning, deeply spiritual Christian. To her amazement, he replies.What follows is a developing relationship between Mira and the English, aristocratic Rand, conducted by e-mail. The reader sees only Mira’s e-mails and must gauge Rand from her responses to what he says. These can range from: ‘That’s not what I said,’ and ‘I didn’t say that either,’ to accounts of the milestones in her life that cause her to believe as she does, her travels, the glories of the different faiths, and their attendant darkness. Mira knows, only too well, that anything human will contain darkness. Her own life has enough of this, but it also has loves, friendships, journeys: the terrorist who proposed marriage, the Prom where the boy she wanted (Justin, an uptight WASP) goes with a girl of his own ilk (who wears orange lipstick to complement her gown as Justin proudly notes). Mira’s partner is Imre, ‘a Hungarian-American drug dealer and spiritual seeker who did bare knuckle push-ups on gravel.’ Such vignettes give the reader vivid images of Mira, her life and her views.The e-mails also explore the multiplicity and transcendence of human faith. The book is, in itself, an education in the background and beliefs of many of the world’s greatest religions – their strengths and their weaknesses, though this isn’t a text book of comparative religions, nor is it a ‘Sophie’s World’ for theology students: these are Mira’s views, strongly held and powerfully argued. Goshka makes good use of the e-mail form. We see, with each one Mira writes, whether she sends it, saves it or deletes it. Mira, who can and will fight with anyone in pursuit of honesty, finds love a terrifying emotion. A whole page consists of stuttering starts and blanknesses that are deleted one by one: ‘Dear Rand’ (Delete) ‘Dear Rand’ (delete) Blank e-mail (delete). At one point she writes: ‘You’re very funny. Even when you’re being a radioactive, mutant, asshole.’ What she sends is: ‘You’re very funny.’ Rand may never receive these deleted mails, but the reader gains insights and understandings into Mira’s life and world as much by what she doesn’t say (to others) as what she does say.Goshka introduces variety into the voice and perspective by giving snatches of e-mail correspondence with Amanda, a close friend of Mira’s who, with both a cynicism about the world born from experience and genuine warmth that comes from her love for Mira, advises, comments and supports in her bitty, scatty mails. In these brief extracts scattered through the book, Goshka creates the real strength of women’s friendships – but even here, Mira does not always say everything she might want to say. Even mails to Amanda get amended or deleted.Save, Send, delete is narrative and didactic, satirical, lyrical and moving. At one point Mira says to Rand: ‘Well, aren’t you the little kamikaze pilot,’ in another pleads, ‘Convince me that there is no God.’ She talks about the poverty and deprivation she has seen in the world, even in the over-privileged west: the student who cannot escape from the father who is beating him, Jim Zwerg, the white Freedom Rider who allowed himself to be singled out for brutal assault by the Klan, and the attempt of the nurse to protect him later when there is danger of further attack by the mob – she gives him extra anaesthesia so he won’t suffer if they lynch him.Mira (and Goshka – she is very clear that this book is written from personal experience) has no illusions about both the depths to which human beings can sink, and the heights they can achieve.This is fiction pushed to the limit. Goshka does not compromise, and the result is a very readable, thought-provoking and moving book. less

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