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alba_marie 's review for:
The Shadow Land
by Elizabeth Kostova
I'm in 2 minds about this book. A caveat - I started The Shadowland 3 months ago, read half of it, then got distracted by another book and didn't pick it up again until last week. Was this because the story didn't pull me in? Possibly. It definitely made the book feel disjointed.
In many ways, The Shadowland frustrated me, tempting me with intriguing rays of history, but then relied on a story set in modern times that seems so unbelievable.
It starts in this way: a young woman haunted by death of a family member (some years before...) comes to Bulgaria on a whim, picks up the wrong bag at a taxi stand, finds out too late it contains an urn and ashes, finds a taxi of her own and tries to find the owners of the urn. Ok, believable enough? Then she spends about 300 pages, 5 days and hundreds of kilometres trying to find the dead guy's family (who seem to have completely vanished) with her now-friended and almost-too-helpful taxi driver ("Bobby"). The police are no help, then someone starts chasing them, they can't find the dead guy's family for days, yet they keep going, from one town to another, across Bulgaria several times. This is when I feel like it gets a bit too unbelievable. The characters felt too earnest, too persistent, too paranoid. They often did not feel real. Would you (or anyone?) react the way Alexandra or Bobby act in the novel? I doubt it. And then, annoyingly, the author seemed determined to pit Alexandria with someone -anyone - romantically. (Why?? Can't she just be Alexandra??)
The heart and soul of the story actually takes place in the 1940s and 50s when the dead guy was a young musician during the communist regime. He is imprisoned without trial and put in a forced labour camp. The book is interesting in that it brings to life not only a country and a people often ignored by the wider world (poor Bulgaria...) as well as shinning a spotlight on the horrors of communist Eastern Bloc - sudden arrests, forced labour camp, withheld trials, murders of political dissents, never knowing who to trust or if the neighbours are watching, mass murder, corruption, starvation and abuse of prisoners just because they can. As well as how that past has unfolded in modern times, and how the corruption still stands in the shadows of modern Bulgaria.
So to sum it up - it was interesting. I learned a lot. I feel like I've walked away with a deeper understanding of Bulgaria and communism. While America was in its 1950s Golden Age of consumerism, Bulgarians were living in poverty (if they were lucky) or in labour camps if unlucky. I've spent a lot of time in Eastern Europe - a year living in Poland, and then years of using holidays to visit places like Estonia and Czechia, Hungary and Latvia and Croatia. A work trip to develop tourism in Macedonia, and a honeymoon to Romania. A weekend in Kiev, another in Vilno - not to mention, 10 days in Russia.... Further trips are planned back to Poland and Czechia and beyond. The Shadowland has given an even deeper appreciation for this part of the world, intriguing me to know more, to visit more, to understand more. But I do feel like the book is missing something - the modern story is too forced, the characters (esp. Alexandria) frustrating in their lack of dimension. I think Kostova should have set more of her book in the past, under the regime, and found a way to structure the story without Alexandra - instead, putting Neven or even Bobby at the centre.
In many ways, The Shadowland frustrated me, tempting me with intriguing rays of history, but then relied on a story set in modern times that seems so unbelievable.
It starts in this way: a young woman haunted by death of a family member (some years before...) comes to Bulgaria on a whim, picks up the wrong bag at a taxi stand, finds out too late it contains an urn and ashes, finds a taxi of her own and tries to find the owners of the urn. Ok, believable enough? Then she spends about 300 pages, 5 days and hundreds of kilometres trying to find the dead guy's family (who seem to have completely vanished) with her now-friended and almost-too-helpful taxi driver ("Bobby"). The police are no help, then someone starts chasing them, they can't find the dead guy's family for days, yet they keep going, from one town to another, across Bulgaria several times. This is when I feel like it gets a bit too unbelievable. The characters felt too earnest, too persistent, too paranoid. They often did not feel real. Would you (or anyone?) react the way Alexandra or Bobby act in the novel? I doubt it. And then, annoyingly, the author seemed determined to pit Alexandria with someone -anyone - romantically. (Why?? Can't she just be Alexandra??)
The heart and soul of the story actually takes place in the 1940s and 50s when the dead guy was a young musician during the communist regime. He is imprisoned without trial and put in a forced labour camp. The book is interesting in that it brings to life not only a country and a people often ignored by the wider world (poor Bulgaria...) as well as shinning a spotlight on the horrors of communist Eastern Bloc - sudden arrests, forced labour camp, withheld trials, murders of political dissents, never knowing who to trust or if the neighbours are watching, mass murder, corruption, starvation and abuse of prisoners just because they can. As well as how that past has unfolded in modern times, and how the corruption still stands in the shadows of modern Bulgaria.
So to sum it up - it was interesting. I learned a lot. I feel like I've walked away with a deeper understanding of Bulgaria and communism. While America was in its 1950s Golden Age of consumerism, Bulgarians were living in poverty (if they were lucky) or in labour camps if unlucky. I've spent a lot of time in Eastern Europe - a year living in Poland, and then years of using holidays to visit places like Estonia and Czechia, Hungary and Latvia and Croatia. A work trip to develop tourism in Macedonia, and a honeymoon to Romania. A weekend in Kiev, another in Vilno - not to mention, 10 days in Russia.... Further trips are planned back to Poland and Czechia and beyond. The Shadowland has given an even deeper appreciation for this part of the world, intriguing me to know more, to visit more, to understand more. But I do feel like the book is missing something - the modern story is too forced, the characters (esp. Alexandria) frustrating in their lack of dimension. I think Kostova should have set more of her book in the past, under the regime, and found a way to structure the story without Alexandra - instead, putting Neven or even Bobby at the centre.