"it was in Buenos Aires, her native city, where Alicia was most at ease, most relaxed. I’ve had the privilege of wandering along the streets of that great city in her company, while Alicia pointed out the churches, cafés, and parks that occupy the pages of her books. There, the allusions that had previously been just verbal icons for me suddenly became sounds, smells, vital experiences. Of course every three or four blocks we had to stop for an espresso, that potent Argentine libation that seemed to fuel her unflagging energy and which she described in The Rainforest as “one of life’s great pleasures.” Alicia never distinguished between the minutia of everyday life – the aroma of coffee, a recipe for pastel de papas, the intimate language of eroticism and the erotic intimacy of language – and her constant preoccupation with the “big,” transcendental questions. Cecilia, for example, the protagonist of The Rainforest, compares the incessant comings and goings of ants with the human condition: “I don’t admire or torture [ants] anymore, as I did when I was a kid, but sometimes, since I have nothing else to do with my time, I get the urge. To pick up an ant and place it way back at the end of the line, ever so carefully. How would I feel if an enormous hand were to lift me up and deposit me at the end of the line at the bank or the post office?” That enormous hand belongs, of course, to the Deity in whom Alicia sometimes believed and sometimes didn’t. It’s the elusive figure whose presence, called for or not, can be felt behind all her existential speculation, linguistic games, frank humor, and anguished, hopeful characters. It’s the stentorian voice that addresses the protagonist of Call Me Magdalena, asking: “Would you like to see my enormous Countenance outlined in the sky?” and to which she candidly replies, “I’d be scared shitless, immense God.” Moments later, when, despite Magdalena’s fears, the image of the Divine Face appears before her, they engage in a pleasant dialogue about the destiny of the Jews in the Hereafter, concluding that, although it’s “not mandatory” for Jews to go to Heaven, if they choose to go they’ll find no anti-Semitism there. In fact, adds the Lord reassuringly, “We’ve all learned a little Yiddish.” This perfect confluence of irreverence and seriousness is what I believe best synthesizes the essence of Alicia Steimberg’s work and characterizes the irrepressible ebullience of the woman."