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Train to Trieste By Melissa J Wantuck  |
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Released in print August 5, a new author will make her mark on the literary world with a novel that touches the senses and plays with ones fears. Domnica Radulescu’s Train to Trieste is a work of historical fiction set during the communist regime of Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania.
Radulescu is a Romanian immigrant and came to the United States in 1983. She lived in Romania during the time period of the novel and her personal experience cannot be doubted as a catalyst for her story.
Her protagonist, Mona Maria Manoliu, is a seventeen-year-old on the verge of adulthood. Thinking about the future, Mona is a scholar of literature and wants to become a professor, like her father. Her ambitions are mature but her actions are still that of a young girl. She is experiencing her first love and wants nothing more than to live a carefree life with her lover away from the fear and uncertainty that plagues her world. Her desires throw her onto a dangerous path and when she finally realizes the repercussions of her actions, there’s no turning back.
Mona’s story is also the story of her family and their memories of better times in Romania, before the bombs of war devestated the people and before the communists continued with a mental onslaught. Mona’s relatives keep their memories alive by sharing them with Mona and secretly passing down their traditions to her. She sits and listens to her family speak againt The Party and share political jokes that brings laughter and a small spark of happiness in a dreary and hopeless existence.
Fear permeates throughout the story as Mona witnesses friends and family who disappear or die under mysterious circumstances, and she herself is being followed and watched by the secret police, or Securitate. Her family and fellow citizens around them must bear limited electricity allowances, one maybe two hours of hot water a day, little to no heat in the winter, and constant food rations. This picture painted by Radulescu is one of governmental abuse, pain, but resilience as people meet underground to change the country and free it from the government and secret police that keep everyone chained to a controled existence.
Radulescu brings out the colors and scents of her country, the sea, the mountains, the trees and fruits that grow wild and untamed by The Party. Mona sees her life through these natural elements, she experiences love among them and then they become the triggers of memories and a happy association to forget the gray of the city and the colorless clothes worn by its inhabitents. These visual aspects bring relief from the fear and oppression prevelant in the life of Radulescu’s characters.
The language is rich, the imagery is vivid although the story halts at times, stumbling over changes in the timeline particularly at the beginning of the story when Mona flashes back to scenes of her childhood. Overall it’s a compelling tale that tugs at the soul and man’s common search for a life of happiness.
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