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A review by alicetheowl
Zoli by Colum McCann
4.0
I hadn't expected an artsy book with shifting perspectives and sentences that didn't always make sense. Nor was I expecting to learn about the advent of Communism in the Slavic region. I was hoping for a reasonably fair and accurate portrayal of one Romani woman. I'm satisfied with what I ended up reading, though.
The book spans over 70 years, following the life of a fictional Romani woman around what was then Czechoslovakia, based loosely on another poet of that time. She's witness to many terrible things, learns to read and sing, and embraces Communism with the rest of her kumpanija, the close-knit group she travels with. She meets a half-Slovac translator who falls in love with her, and falls hard. He and his employer write down her songs as poems, which are published, and used as justification for forcing Romani in that country to settle.
For this, she's banished, and escapes the country. I'm still not sure where, exactly, she wound up, but she does marry, or maybe just settle down, with a hermit, and she has a daughter. The book ends with her reuniting with the half-Slovac translator at a conference on Romani acceptance. Were this a Hollywood movie, they'd reconnect and be delighted to see one another. But it isn't, and she's desperate to escape this reminder of why her life had to change so drastically.
The way the story was told made it hard to follow, sometimes, and I'm not sure I liked the portrait painted by the journalist character in his perspective. And I was confused by Zoli's assertion that Romani don't steal, coupled with the half-Slovak's missing pieces off his motorbike because he left it unattended. I'm not sure even the author had decided whether he was going to embrace that stereotype or not.
But, overall, I did enjoy the story, and I felt like I knew a few things I didn't before. It's definitely not a breezy, easy read, nor is it a brick of a textbook. It does inspire some brain cell activity.
The book spans over 70 years, following the life of a fictional Romani woman around what was then Czechoslovakia, based loosely on another poet of that time. She's witness to many terrible things, learns to read and sing, and embraces Communism with the rest of her kumpanija, the close-knit group she travels with. She meets a half-Slovac translator who falls in love with her, and falls hard. He and his employer write down her songs as poems, which are published, and used as justification for forcing Romani in that country to settle.
For this, she's banished, and escapes the country. I'm still not sure where, exactly, she wound up, but she does marry, or maybe just settle down, with a hermit, and she has a daughter. The book ends with her reuniting with the half-Slovac translator at a conference on Romani acceptance. Were this a Hollywood movie, they'd reconnect and be delighted to see one another. But it isn't, and she's desperate to escape this reminder of why her life had to change so drastically.
The way the story was told made it hard to follow, sometimes, and I'm not sure I liked the portrait painted by the journalist character in his perspective. And I was confused by Zoli's assertion that Romani don't steal, coupled with the half-Slovak's missing pieces off his motorbike because he left it unattended. I'm not sure even the author had decided whether he was going to embrace that stereotype or not.
But, overall, I did enjoy the story, and I felt like I knew a few things I didn't before. It's definitely not a breezy, easy read, nor is it a brick of a textbook. It does inspire some brain cell activity.