Oh, The Places We Have Never Gone....

I read Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian  over ten years ago, and it has stayed with me as a wonderful reading experience.  I read her second book, The Swan Thieves, when it came out, and I had very mixed feelings..  My recollection of it is that it is an ambitious book in its construction and philosophy, but not necessarily a satisfying read.  I have been thinking that this may have been because I read it on a rather emotionally taxing trip to Alaska, which may not be the right backdrop for it, so I may try it again.

On a past episode of the Currently Reading Podcast one of the hosts recommended The Historian and they went on to talk about how Elizabeth Kostova has written very little since.  Lo and behold, here is The Shadow Land,  which was published in 2017.  I have just finished it--it is one of those books that lures you in to "Just One More Chapter...."

One of the most lovely things about Elizabeth Kostova's writing is her slightly melancholy tone and her extremely strong sense of place.  I generally feel the need to go back and check the dates that things are supposed to be happening because both The Historian and The Shadow Land  are set in worlds that are drenched in history.  The history is a character in the books, overshadowing current events.  In SL, Alexandra, our young main character, has been drowning in her personal history since she was sixteen, so her history-logged life and the history-drenched world around her are very congruent.

The majority of us in the United States know very little about eastern Europe.  Elizabeth Kostova is married to a Bulgarian man and runs a foundation for creative writing in Bulgaria.  The world that she describes is just as puzzling to us as it is to Alexandra.  What does all this mean?  Who can you trust? What is the hisotry that we don't know that has an impact on us right now?  We all experience these questions when we travel to new countries, but here this is a profound sense of cuttural unease. For most of the world, the past is never past.  Americans have been allowed to have a naive and inappropriate belief that we are exempt from history because we are such a "Young" country, built on a metaphorical hill.  As I write this, it occurs to me that my question about the history that we don't know impacting today is very topical and immediate.  I will be witing about Stamped From the Beginning this week,, and Kendi's work certainly brings that question home for all of us.

For those who are concerned that this is going to be a WWII book, it is not--the memoir pieces are set in post-Communist Bulgaria, which, again, we know very little about.  All of the characters are dealing with painful, frieghtening events that continue to have current echoes and serve as warnings for us.  The memoirs are difficult to read but not unmanageable. 

I almost just wrote that this is a story of hope and survival.  It is, but with survival and pain often comes guilt.  How do we learn to let guilt go and lead lives that are productive and genuine without letting ourselves be stunted?  One of Kostova's answers is that we create.  Her characters are writers, painters, musicians, and consumately humane individuals.  We each make decisions about how to live every day.