Rosarita is a book I found thanks to it appearing on one of Barack Obama’s reading lists. I am planning to read everything that has appeared on his lists over the years, as well as adding to my “to be read” pile from it. Rosarita is more novella than novel, and I listened to it rather quickly on audiobook.

Bonita is from India and has travelled to Mexico to immerse herself in the Spanish language. She has never been to Mexico before, and is enjoying the anonymity of the beach she is living on temporarily, when a woman approaches her. She swears Bonita is the spitting image of her mother, an artist, who once lived in the area. Bonita protests that her mother was never an artist, never mind having traveled to Mexico when she was young. Still, Bonita’s curiosity is piqued. Could her mother have had a past that she knows nothing of? Or is the woman convincingly crazy?

It was hard to know what to make of Rosarita. On one hand, it would seem Bonita is learning a life lesson about the hopes and dreams her mother once had that got pushed to the side when she married and had a family. On the other hand, it could all be an encounter with a woman whose mind is affected by dementia who paints a convincing portrait of a life that never existed. It causes her to reflect on what she knows of her mother and of her mother’s life, and she comes away from that realizing she doesn’t really know much at all. There is a possible truth in what the strange woman asserts, and she begins to see how women in her culture surrender parts of themselves to fit in.

The writing is beautifully poetic. Desai creates visuals I could easily imagine, despite not having spent a lot of time in Mexico myself. Some truths are universal. Removing Bonita from her comfort zone to go on this adventure feels almost like a coming-of-age story, although she’s a bit older than the age we would usually think of for this. The prose makes it easy to understand her own conflicted feelings as she follows the woman down the rabbit hole of the possibilities of the past.

The truth of the situation is never obvious, and I like that. Throughout the story, there are possibilities that Bonita is being carried through an insane woman’s delusions, or that she has a spark of insight into the mother she is realizing she never really knew. In the end, there is no obvious resolution. Either possibility is there, although I’d like to believe there is a bit of truth in either scenario. It really is up to the reader to decide what they believe at the end of it all.

I very much enjoyed listening to Rosarita. It is a beautiful, thoughtful story of the generations. It is a cautionary tale for Bonita about losing herself to conform to what her society demands of her, while at the same time being a tragic tale of a woman whose mind is lost in the past. I do think it takes a special kind of reader to appreciate the open-ended story as things aren’t wrapped up neat and tidy, but designed to make you consider all of the possibilities.