![]() ![]() However, if I were to name one reason I’m so in awe of this book, it’s the way the writing works through trauma. I could list any number of reasons: the perfection of its language, the political significance, the heft of the characters’ living, to borrow a phrase from Adrienne Rich. The Land of Green Plums stunned me when I read it. The four come together when one of their classmates hangs herself. Like her friends, she escaped the cultural oppression of her village only to be persecuted by the totalitarian regime. The story is told by a young woman who belongs to the ethnic German minority in Ceauşescu-ruled Romania. ![]() The Land of Green Plums begins with a song: ‘everyone had a friend in every wisp of cloud / that’s how it is with friends where the world is full of fear / even my mother said, that’s how it is / friends are out of the question / think of more serious things.’ So when I say the novel is about four friends, I use the word delicately. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |