This author is brilliant. This book is so engaging. With sentences like :
"Most of my quirks as a storyteller, I picked up from my father or uncle, but my habit of never telling the same story the same way more than once, that came from my mother alone.
"How can anyone learn to tell your stories like you if you're always changing them?" Uncle Andrei complained.
"They shouldn't tell stories like me," I replied. "They should tell my stories like them." " pg 83
how could you not be drawn into the story?!?!
The book opens with this statement:
"Once upon a time, something happened. If it had not happened, it would not be told."
And what unfolds is totally unexpected. You are at once swept up into what life is like for Ileana and her family who lived in Romania during post-WWII communist rule. I've never read about a book that so well describes how communism absolutely destroys a country.
Just shreds it.
But the ruin doesn't stay confined to the country/governing level, it continues ripping until it reaches the very seams of society, the families and farming villages.
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