Memory & Desire

The autobiographical novel,Memory and Desire,traces the gradual but inexorable disintegrationof a family. At the outset, when thirty-nine yearold Daria Khasmanov recovers memories of her fathersprolonged sexual assaults, she cannot connect the parentshe knows today with the predator of her recollections.And she persuades herself that the past can be divided fromthe 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 ofevents which, over the course of seventeen years, leads tothe inevitable dissolution of the familial ties she had longlabored to preserve.