Alina is a young woman, a teacher, in the 1970s, living in the Socialist Republic of Romania, under a restrictive Communist regime. She and her husband, Liviu are generally happy and in love but when Liviu’s brother defects, both of them fall under suspicion and her increasingly threatened with surveillance and interrogation. As the stress of the regime mounts up against them, the cracks in their marriage widen, as well as Alina’s already tense relationship with her mother and her complicated family history.
This is a brief novel, less than 200 pages, that uses a sense of surrealism to unmoor its reader. In another book, I might call it magic realism – this sense of unclearness as to what is real and what is not – but here I felt like van Llewyn was deliberately sowing seeds of confusion. Throwing her reader off kilter, not letting us know what to expect next, what might be possible, because this is exactly how Alina lives under a dictatorship. Minute decisions change her life. Another person’s actions can alter the entire course of her future and how that other person makes their decisions may be entirely unclear or unfair.
The short length works well here because it means the reader is more willing to go along for this confusing ride. The strange things that Alina does and that happen around her simply add up to a strange world in which she exists and has very little power. At the same time, many of the scenes were uncomfortably realistic and undoubtedly based on real-life experiences of people in Romania at that time.
A bit of knowledge of the Soviet Era in this part of Eastern Europe and a willingness to be swept along definitely helps with this one.
Karissa Reads Books 
You make a great point – magic realism only works in small doses (at least in most cases). A whole trilogy of make believe is possible (aka Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter) but it requires significant investment on the part of the reader, and not all writers can pull this off. In so many cases, shorter is better!
Getting the reader to buy in is key! A book like this, where that magic realism is unexpected, less is more and van Llewyn does a great job with that.
I do not know my Romanian history, but I do know the YA author Hillary Monahan said on Twitter that people were criticizing her portrayal of Romani characters when she herself is Romani.
My grandmother came to Canada from what is now Romania so I’ve always been interested in that part of the world. My understanding is that Romani is actually different from Romanian. The Romani people are an ethnic group that used to be referred to as Gypsies while Romanians are the majority group living in the country of Romania. But the country is also comprised of different regions and languages; my grandma came from Transylvania and spoke German and culturally was a lot more German than Romanian, I would say.
Holy crap-a-toli, I don’t even know the difference between a culture and a country.
This one is particularly confusing! When I was in Eastern Europe I told someone my grandmother was from Romania and they thought I was telling them she was Romani. Plus Romania is confusing because it used to be part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and so has different pockets of ethnicity and language and some are Romani but then the Romani are also not necessarily tied to a particular land.
Okay, so Romani sounds a bit like Jewish. I see what you mean.
Yes, I think that’s a decent comparison.
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