Bookish thoughts...

On Herta Műller's The Land of Green Plums.

The First Line:  When we don't speak, said Edgar, we become unbearable, and when we do, we make fools of ourselves.

Set in Romania during Ceauşecu's reign, this story follows four college friends over the years as they endure searches, interrogations, and the rising tides of fear brought on by the oppressive society in which they live. They hide their poems, guard their conversations, and use secret codes in their letters. They're assigned jobs after college, then those jobs are taken away. And they each dream of escape.

"Back then, when Edgar, Kurt, Georg, and I were still students, there were lots of things we saw in the exact same way. But bad luck fell on each of us differently, once we were scattered about the country. We remained dependent on one another. The letters with hairs in them only served to let each of us read his own fears in the handwriting of another...Each of us imagined how we might desert our friends by committing suicide. And we each accused the others--without ever saying so--of being the sole reason for our not going through with it. In this way, we each became self-righteous, armed with a ready silence that blamed the others for the fact that we were each still alive instead of dead.

This book drew me in with the first sentence and didn't let go until the last. It's a challenging, yet compelling read, with a narrative style reminiscent of two of Virginia Woolf's novels:  Jacob's Room and The Waves--which means this novel isn't exactly simple or straight-forward, but if you have a little patience, all the pieces do eventually come together. Műller's storytelling is unflinching, and sometimes heartbreaking; there's also a lot of poetry in her prose. To be honest, when I decided to read this book, I wasn't sure I was going to enjoy it, or even get through it, but I ended up really liking it! So here's to another outstanding read in 2017.

Happy Reading!

Stoker's Manuscript

"So you wish to enter the world of the undead ... To immerse in this is to invite the undead into your life."  Mara lifted an eyebrow over her glasses in that way the fortune teller asks if you really wish to know of your days ahead.  "By the time you understand my warning," she said, "it will be too late, and they will be in your life."

I love Bram Stoker's Dracula; it's one of my favorite classics. So, when I saw the title of Royce Prouty's novel and read it's premise, I had to buy it. His main character, Joseph Barkeley, is a rare book dealer who has been hired to authenticate an original draft of Stoker's Dracula for a mysterious buyer. As part of his job, Joseph must also transport the manuscript to Castel Bran in the heart of Romania: Dracula's Castle. There, Joseph becomes tangled up in the dark secrets of his undead employer, the secrets hidden in Bram Stoker's original manuscript, and the secrets of his own past.

I think what I liked best about this novel was Joseph's own history as a Romanian orphan and his return to the country of his birth. Prouty transports you to Romania and really gives you a tour of that country and it's people -- it's bookish travel at its very best! I also liked that his vampires are in the same vein as Bram Stoker's, with a few added twists. His story is good--interesting and very readable--and his suspenseful ending would make Stoker proud.

I wish he'd included a bibliography at the end of his novel so I knew what books he read to research Bram Stoker's life. (I'm in the mood for a good biography.) Beyond that, I'm happy to have checked another book off my TBR stack.

Happy Reading!