Awakening
Where the first threads cross
In the country around Ceahlău, old mountain stories belong to the rhythms of ordinary life, alongside mountain weather, wooden churches and the inherited convictions of the people who live there. Awakening begins by allowing that familiar world to become quietly unsettling. Perhaps an old warning deserves more attention than a modern explanation would ordinarily allow.
Across the Atlantic, Daniel Dragoș Mavrocordat has made a life in science without losing his attachment to Romania. In Iași, the young artist Alex Mănole has his own sharp eye for the world. Their separate lives begin to draw together as evidence makes a connection between inherited memory and the present increasingly difficult to dismiss.
The novel takes obvious pleasure in the country it introduces: its humour, music, food, romance and richly varied people. Those pleasures lend the emerging mystery its force. The implications are only beginning to reach beyond this intimate world, but already there is a sense that the crossings ahead will matter on a far larger scale.
The pleasure of discovering what lies beneath
One of the pleasures of Awakening is the way it asks us to look again at things that seem familiar. In the Ceahlău country, an old warning or a story passed down through generations belongs as naturally to conversation as the church bells and the mountain weather. Daniel’s scientific training offers a very different way of approaching the world, but the novel does not rush to declare one view the winner. It lets the distance between them become intriguing, then quietly narrows it.
There is a generous affection for Romania here, too. Iași’s streets, the warmth of a shared meal, music, teasing and the awkward exhilaration of attraction have room to breathe. They are what make the gathering mystery worth caring about. By the time the implications begin to reach beyond the people who first noticed something unusual, the reader has discovered a country and a circle of lives to which it is rather easy to grow attached.