The Incantation of Frida K

the long version

""I was born in rain and I will die in rain," begins Kate Braverman's The Incantation of Frida K., an imagined journey through the life of Frida Kahlo. We are inside the mind of Frida K., at 46, on her deathbed, racked with memories and hallucinations. We shiver on the threshold of life and death, dream and reality, truth and myth.". "Frida K. navigates the alleys and opium dens of San Francisco's Chinatown in the '20s, of Paris in the '30s (where she rubs shoulders with and snubs Andre Breton and Pablo Picasso), the Park Avenue salons of Rockefeller's New York, and back to Coyoacan, her corner of Mexico City. Braverman's Frida openly scorns her lover, Diego Rivera, for his "predictable geometry" and conventional vision. Still, they are deeply enmeshed, and he is integral to her psyche. Frida K.'s voyage is an inward one, an incantation before dying. Braverman redefines the natural order. Her language is brutally lyrical, seductive, and utterly original. She carves out a bold interpretation of an artist to whom she is vitally connected. The Incantation of Frida K. is an inhabitation, an autopsy of the soul."--BOOK JACKET.