Comment

Mar 12, 2018SallyLaslie rated this title 4.5 out of 5 stars
In a couple of instances Greenwell seems to expatiate on situations that need less elaboration, e.g., the message about his dying and in many respects dysfunctional father and his long walk in his "polished shoes" across muddy embankments as he sorts things out. But his description of the train journey to Plovdiv with his mother and of the little boy whose behavior reminded Greenwell of a young Mitko (near the end of the book) and the last visit by Mitko to the apartment of the American teacher and his sympathetic response to the hopelessness of the young hustler's predicament were immensely moving to me. Having been in Bulgaria a couple times, I became aware that to signal a negative one shakes your head up and down and left to right to signal something positive. This is never really clearly spelled out, it seems to me.