From the coasts of Cuba to Israel's Mediterranean shores, Lowinger, the author of
Tropicana Nights, interweaves her life story with insights drawn from her career in art conservation and restoration. Fleeing rising antisemitic sentiment in Eastern Europe and landing somewhat accidentally in Cuba, the author's family became immigrants twice over when they left their successful dry-goods stores and Fidel Castro's communist autocracy for Miami. "We'd lost an island, but gained America," she writes. "Refugees around the world were clamoring to get into this amazing country." Though her parents saw some financial success in their new country and Lowinger herself rose from a small South Beach apartment to build a successful art restoration practice, the generational weight of dreams foregone, marital tensions, and homelands left behind, wormed indelibly into the family. Undercurrents of violent tempers, indignation, and self-doubt hum throughout the text, with the author's simple, straightforward prose and humble anecdotes belying her impressive professional stature, particularly as one of the few Latinas in the field. Lowinger offers detailed but approachable explanations of materials and techniques used in her work as metaphors (some more cohesive than others) for life's ups and downs, from personal experiences of marriage and divorce to societal reckonings with racial, political, or economic injustice. As she acquired the skills, experience, and judgment required to lead prolific restoration projects, she began to understand, forgive, and love the places and people she came from, both physically and psychologically. Willing to immerse herself in the complexities and contradictions that mark Cuba, her family, and herself, without rushing to erase them, the author leaves readers with respect for the hazy, ever-moving line between remedy and disease and between making something better and destroying it completely, in life as well as in art.
A masterful revelation about life and art imitating each other in maintenance and repair.-- "Kirkus Starred Review"
"
Dwell Time is a multi-generational family memoir that reads like a panoramic, deeply moving roman-fleuve--taking the reader from Eastern Europe through Havana, Miami, Manhattan, and Los Angeles, amid revolution, war, upheaval, and exoduses. That a revered conservator writes it of art makes perfect sense because Lowinger's profession has given her a complex understanding of the past, the contingencies of history, and the differences between surface and interior. One of art conservation's creeds is: "You can't repair what you don't understand." This beautiful book is an act of understanding as a work of art."--Randy Kennedy, American novelist and director of special projects for the international art gallery Hauser & Wirth
"
Dwell Time evokes a visceral, vibrant, complex materiality. Lowinger brilliantly unlocks the stories that reside in the material. This book is as intellectually engaging as it is profoundly moving."--Dana Spiotta, author of
Wayward, a
New York Times Critics' Top Book of the Year
"In
Dwell Time, art conservator Rosa Lowinger delves deep into a profound insight lying at the heart of her profession: when you understand how something got broken, you cannot help but soften to it. And when you soften to the damage done to an object of art, you soften to the damage others have done to you. Bit by bit, you begin to let go of the pain of the past, learning to live more fully in the present. Deeply personal and profoundly moving,
Dwell Time transcends the field of art conservation, applying its lessons to family and beyond."--Barry C. Michels, LCSW, JD, bestselling author of
The Tools and Coming Alive"It's no exaggeration to call [
Dwell Time] a work of genius. Rosa Lowinger has reinvented the genre of memoir writing, crafting a story that is deeply moving and wonderfully unique. Weaving together her vast knowledge as an art conservator with the haunting intergenerational trauma of her Cuban Jewish family, she reveals how even when our world feels broken, repair is still possible. In dialogue with Primo Levi's
The Periodic Table, this brilliant, beautiful book takes the reader on a journey from LA to Miami to Rome to Cuba to Haiti to Hawaii and other destinations, as Lowinger keeps seeking ways to fix things that seem damaged beyond hope. In the process she finds love and forgiveness and learns how to fix the fissures in her own heart. A stunning achievement!"--Ruth Behar, author of
Letters from Cuba and Distinguished University Professor of Anthropology, University of Michigan
"Rosa Lowinger's
Dwell Time is the story of a family, a mother-daughter relationship, but forged of what seems like new building materials entirely. An artist has many duties, among them to conserve the traditions and innovations of the past but also to "make it new." This memoir does just that, and delivers on its final promise, that of repair."--Gary Shteyngart, the
New York Times bestselling author of the memoir
Little Failure and novels that include
Super Sad True Love Story,
Absurdistan, and
Our Country Friends
