''A Book of Common Prayer'' is a 1977 novel by
Joan Didion. A limited signed edition of this book was issued by
Franklin library.
Themes
The novel is a story of both personal and political tragedy in the fictional
Central American country of "Boca Grande". In 1983 Didion published ''
Salvador
Salvador, meaning "salvation" (or "saviour") in Catalan, Spanish, and Portuguese may refer to:
* Salvador (name)
Arts, entertainment, and media Music
*Salvador (band), a Christian band that plays both English and Spanish music
** ''Salvador'' ( ...
'', a book of essays on corruption and violence in
El Salvador
El Salvador (; , meaning " The Saviour"), officially the Republic of El Salvador ( es, República de El Salvador), is a country in Central America. It is bordered on the northeast by Honduras, on the northwest by Guatemala, and on the south b ...
; the fiction and non-fiction reflect a similar perspective of rage and despair.
Plot introduction
The novel is narrated by Grace Strasser-Mendana, an American expatriate who married into one of the three or four families that dominate Boca Grande politics, the Mendanas. Grace was trained as an anthropologist under
Claude Lévi-Strauss, and later took up the amateur study of
biochemistry, both attempts to find clear-cut, scientific answers to the mysteries of human behavior. Both attempts fail: Grace remains uncomprehending and cut off from the people around her, and in the final line of the novel she admits, "I have not been the witness I wanted to be."
But Grace is not the novel's central character. That is Charlotte Douglas, another American woman sojourning in Boca Grande, although her family ties are elsewhere. Charlotte's beloved daughter Marin has run off with a group of
Marxist
Marxism is a Left-wing politics, left-wing to Far-left politics, far-left method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a Materialism, materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand S ...
radicals and taken part in an absurd act of terrorism, and in the wake of her daughter's disappearance, Charlotte's marriage to a crusading Berkeley lawyer (not Marin's father), has fallen apart.
References
External links
Book page on Joan Didion website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Book of Common Prayer, A
1977 American novels
Novels by Joan Didion
Novels set in Central America