“Guilt walks on all fours. It creeps, encircles, and climbs. It presses its thumbs to your throat. And it waits.” That’s the heartbreaking beauty Sepetys brings to her historical novels; and also why she is one of my favourite authors. Her writing is a work of art that rips apart your mind, body and soul, and then puts them back together; leaving you whole again with a knowing that something in you has shifted permanently. This book made me wonder, how many such Stalins, Hitlers, Ceaușescus, Mussolinis, Francos has the world birthed to date? How many such stories are still hidden behind an iron curtain even today? I cannot believe that something like this existed in the same world I live and breathe in. I did not know about Ceaușescu before this book. I deliberately stopped myself from googling about 1989 Romanian Revolution, or searching for pictures of Nicolae Ceaușescu and his wife Elena while reading this novel. But in the end, when I saw their smiling faces p...
There is an inner self to everyone. You might speak, speak a lot; but yet there would be so many things unsaid, so many thoughts not shared, so many emotions hidden; well, here I am - where my silence speaks...