Frances Karlen Santamaria (1937-2013) was born in Cleveland, Ohio, attended Antioch College, and spent most of her life living in New York City. Primarily a writer of fiction and plays, this was her only published work before she was debilitated by multiple sclerosis, in her early forties. She was married twice and had five children.
Synopsis: Originally published in 1970 and now brought back into
print for a new generation of appreciative readers, Frances Karlen
Santamaria's "A Room in Athens: A Memoir" is the remarkable and
candid journal of a free-spirited, young American woman abroad in
Greece with her writer husband in 1964.
Inspired by the sixties' vogue for the exuberant land of Zorba and
Lawrence Durrell, they seek an Aegean idyll -- but their plans
threaten to go awry when she learns she is pregnant. Settling in
Athens, she gives birth to a boy at the country's only natural
child birth clinic which is an underground refuge ruled by a
mysterious Madame Kladaki.
Afterward, as a new mother in a strange land, Frances struggles to
reconcile the myth of Greece, ancient and modern, with contemporary
Athens, even while their idyll recedes.
In 1974, "A Room in Athens" was excerpted in the landmark anthology
'Revelations: Diaries of Women'. This new edition, with an
informative and extensive Introduction by the author's son, Josh
Karlen, unlocks a little-known gem in women's memoir literature for
a new generation.
Critique: Exceptionally well written, organized and presented, "A
Room in Athens: A Memoir" is an absorbing and compelling read from
beginning to end. While very highly recommended for community
library Contemporary Biography collections, it should be noted for
personal reading lists that "A Room in Athens: A Memoir" is also
available in a Kindle format ($8.69). --Mary Cowper, Midwest Book
Review BookWatch, December, 2016--Midwest Book Review BookWatch
A Room in Athens: A Memoir by Frances Karlen Santamaria Review by
Karen Chutsky * * * * * They say artists hover a bit outside of
life; too obsessed with observing, contemplating and recording
their impressions of it to be one hundred percent involved in it.
Such is the pensive writing style of Frances Karlen Santamaria,
best described through the words of her adoring son: ..".she dashed
off written watercolor like impressions of people fresh and
literary...some sympathetically rendered others verge on harsh
caricature." And what better subject to render into vivid pictures
than her first foreign sojourn at the age of 27, during the midst
of the mad dash of the early 60's in America to soak in the "Zorba
the Greek" experience of Greece and other exotic European ports of
call, "where your consciousness is stretched each second with total
attention." Foreign travel has always been a rite of intellectual
passage for the class of thinking Americans to which Frances and
her husband belonged. The synopsis: In 1964, off Frances went with
Arno, the Holiday magazine writer and aspiring novelist at her side
-- and soon to emerge son inside her for part of the ride -- a
child who would become for the last three months of her adventure a
gurgling focus more intriguing than that of the life around her in
their last and longest stop, Athens, Greece. What I find wonderful
about diaries and memoirs are the raw emotions and images of life
that so often become the dulled and manipulated stuff of fiction,
written by those trying to capture the sparks of lives lived by
someone else. Frances' writing offers up her experience like a
plate of steak tartar. Though the book is billed as a comparison of
the realities of Greek life versus the idyll of Greece - "eh" --
the main storyline bubbling through her memoir is purely the
journey of a woman on the cusp of becoming a mother, as she quips;
"the one major event of our grown lives for which we do not have
our hair done," choosing to have her baby at a natural childbirth
clinic in Greece; thought of as a rather dubious thing to do at the
time, while coming to grips with marrying a man "with a built-in
mistress" a writing career. She describes it succinctly thus; "he
seems about to write something...but whatever it is hasn't emerged
...and he lives around an unseen but felt iceberg lodged in his
mind." Her husband seemed to place a higher value on his own
freedom to experience the night life of Greek tavernas with other
young sponges dissecting the novelty of Greek life -- while his
wife was sequestered to "a room in Athens." To quote one of those
famous Greek philosophers she admired so, "Without strife, there
can be no greatness." And in the end, France's wonderfully potent
writing speaks its greatness in this memoir clearest to women,
through the unique episode of life she and a handful of Greek woman
experienced in their journey into motherhood. Most notable are her
vivid sketches of places and peoples, palpable as if one muddled
through the grand tour of Europe -- though sadly, her diary of the
months spent touring England, Italy, Spain, and Yugoslavia,
pre-birth are reduced to a few paragraphs. They would have blasted
open the tunnel of the book into a grander adventure. Hopefully,
they will someday be compiled and edited into what would be a very
worthwhile book. Some vibrant excerpts: "At twilight, the sky above
Athens turns orange and the light in the streets takes on a purple
tones of the bare mountains that semicircle the town. Men sat
drinking in cafes where women never went. The city had awakened
from its long afternoon nap and Athenians were out in their
numbers, going back to work, shopping, strolling. Soldiers--with
custom-made uniforms hugging their bodies-- passed by in the twos
and threes of soldiers everywhere, there were many of the righteous
priests in their black robes, their hair braided in a knot in the
back like a matador's. They had, without exception, the air of smug
landowners..." "Boys in white aprons ran by, swinging tripodic,
long handled trays of coffee and ouzo--messengers of the Greek
carry-out. Occasionally, a cart rumbled by with a handsome young
man standing up driving the horse, so like a charioteer I had to
smile" The greatest compliment I can pay her is that many of her
fecund commentaries on life were just as poignant and literary as
those penned by the great philosophers of Greek antiquity she so
admired. And though the reality of her Greek cultural adventure
felt far short of her fantasy, as she realized "Ancient Greece is a
state of the spirit only to which plane fare can't take you," the
birth of her firstborn son did not disappoint. A Room in Athens or
the more befitting title from its first publication, Joshua, a
First Born, exposes just the tip of the iceberg lodged in the mind
of the very talented writer, Frances Karlen Santamara. * * * * *
Karen Chutsky, Reviewer karenchutsky at aol.com
Author/Editor/Illustrator/Production D--Independent Publisher
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