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m_tplk's review against another edition
4.0
It is a 3,5 ⭐️, but I am feeling generous for the reasons I describe below.
This book was recommended to me at the lovely bookstore “Elephant” in central Sofia during our visit to Bulgaria. The salesman mentioned a common critique of this book: it has a very bitter, sometimes also condescending, style of writing as the Bulgarian-born author returns to her home country after decades of immigration.
The first part of the book that details Kasabova's childhood and youth in socialist Bulgaria is an exciting read. The author is incredibly sincere and isn’t afraid to appear unlikeable: although only a very cruel person would judge a teenager for interesting life choices and mean it. It was especially interesting to me to compare her experiences with the accounts of my own family in the Soviet Union. The detail that struck me is the abundance of food she describes (e.g., she mentions “honeybread” for breakfast and so much fresh produce) and my heart sank as I remembered my mom’s potato-based diet. Another episode that touched me
I skimmed through several reviews on GoodReads before writing mine and focused primarily on those from Bulgarian readers. In short, they find the second part of the book, which is less of a memoir and more of an ethnographic attempt with history lessons quite unsatisfactorily in its oversimplification. Yet, as an outsider who this book was, I assume, intended for, I can say that I learned a great deal from those little sketches Kasabova paints as she travels through her home country to reconcile and find inner peace. It has awoken my interest and I would gladly read more on Balkan history now that I know of several human stories thanks to “Street without a Name”. I am especially grateful for the dialogues with the Turkish minority and her discussion of their fate during the brutal assimilation campaign known as the Revival Process in the 1980s.
This book found me in a hopeless place and gave me a lot to think about. I dream that one day I will be able to go back home just like Kasabova did and spend time reminiscing, revisiting, talking to people in my native language, and hoping (out loud) for the change to come.
This book was recommended to me at the lovely bookstore “Elephant” in central Sofia during our visit to Bulgaria. The salesman mentioned a common critique of this book: it has a very bitter, sometimes also condescending, style of writing as the Bulgarian-born author returns to her home country after decades of immigration.
The first part of the book that details Kasabova's childhood and youth in socialist Bulgaria is an exciting read. The author is incredibly sincere and isn’t afraid to appear unlikeable: although only a very cruel person would judge a teenager for interesting life choices and mean it. It was especially interesting to me to compare her experiences with the accounts of my own family in the Soviet Union. The detail that struck me is the abundance of food she describes (e.g., she mentions “honeybread” for breakfast and so much fresh produce) and my heart sank as I remembered my mom’s potato-based diet. Another episode that touched me
Spoiler
describes her father’s research stay in the Netherlands and her mom’s breakdown over simple, yet clean and private, bathrooms of the West. My 10yo self remembers the horrendous bathrooms at my primary school: no toilets, no stalls, just humiliation — very well.I skimmed through several reviews on GoodReads before writing mine and focused primarily on those from Bulgarian readers. In short, they find the second part of the book, which is less of a memoir and more of an ethnographic attempt with history lessons quite unsatisfactorily in its oversimplification. Yet, as an outsider who this book was, I assume, intended for, I can say that I learned a great deal from those little sketches Kasabova paints as she travels through her home country to reconcile and find inner peace. It has awoken my interest and I would gladly read more on Balkan history now that I know of several human stories thanks to “Street without a Name”. I am especially grateful for the dialogues with the Turkish minority and her discussion of their fate during the brutal assimilation campaign known as the Revival Process in the 1980s.
This book found me in a hopeless place and gave me a lot to think about. I dream that one day I will be able to go back home just like Kasabova did and spend time reminiscing, revisiting, talking to people in my native language, and hoping (out loud) for the change to come.
karolina_numm's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
funny
reflective
medium-paced
3.5
magic_angel's review
4.0
One of my very strong impressions of this book which I have talked about with you previously is that the author doesn't seem to actually have had a childhood. I find it extremely alarming how Bulgaria wasn't a real place with her honest experiences combined but rather her parents' money troubles and governmental issues. I found it very odd that a growing up human would be so concerned with anything but enjoying the world. Even if she did realise at a later point all of the stuff that had happened during her childhood it still felt like she was telling someone else's story. Namely, I presume her parents'. I felt like her book was a long confirmation bias of how right she was to leave the place. In itself this bothered me because you could feel the distance between her and the country she was trying to hate. In the beginning of the book she acknowledges this and says: "My chief delusion was that by becoming deeply absorbed by every other country on the planet except Bulgaria I could get rid of two things. One, my Bulgarian past, which was not of the miserable variety but bothered me nevertheless[..]Two, the need to answer directly the question nice people ask when they meet you: so, where are you from?" In this she admits that she doesn't want to face the country as it truly is or the fact that she has grown up there. This shame in her own head greatly impacts her need to prove to herself that she hates it. A lot of what she says is something that I have myself spoken/thought of, so I found it very interesting that to her there wasn't anything good. She portrays being from Bulgaria as being inferior: "The foreigners sent us exquisite cards from the other side. For a moment, you could even think we were equal". Granted, she has lived in New Zealand longer than in Britain, so maybe that's why I still got bits I had kept close to my heart, such as my friends and the community, whilst living abroad.
On the other hand, her Bulgaria isn't the one I live in. Namely I found it interesting that she had references to Orwell in regards to Bulgaria. Same Orwell references my head made and that horrified my experience initially when moving to the UK. With all the security cameras everywhere and the order that Bulgaria doesn't seem to want to adopt. In her Bulgaria this is a place of extreme restriction due to the political regime. One thing my Bulgaria and hers had in common was the fact that we both felt how people were just fighting for freedom. Bulgaria is always fighting for freedom. I've thought many times that Bulgaria has never forgotten its past with the Ottoman Empire's rule and I find that this is a trauma that has seeped into our cultural identity. Slaves. And it feels like Bulgaria is having a very slow time to grow from its past and learn to be free. Something that countries that were the occupier or ruler don't have to face in the same way. Thinking of Yane Sandanski and his words: "To live means to struggle: the slave for freedom, the free man for perfection.". The author takes it up to quote this and comment that she's still striving for some sort of freedom, hence making her a slave. And I think that even if you're free maybe you always fear becoming a slave and in this constant battle yet remain a slave. This makes me understand more why people want to get rid of history, generational traumas steer the wheel of how we interact with and understand the world: "Every second bridge in Bulgaria has a person's shadow built in. This is also the story of Ottoman Bulgaria in a nutshell. Build your shadow into the Ottoman bridge, it will kill you but what you build will live on. It's a suitable metaphor for a nation that lay low for centuries in order to survive". In a way her references to Waiting for Godot and Samuel Beckett in general are very on point, because Bulgaria has, for many years, been living in the same state that people do after the war, which is the setting of Waiting for Godot and the feeling that Beckett is trying to convey with his play. One of the greatest things I'm observing in Bulgaria is that younger people and newer generations don't grow up with the same mentality which gives me hope that things will really pick up here. I've been extremely happy to see all the events that people have started organising that weren't a part of my childhood, such as art bazaars, christmas markets, public light shows and so on.
She talks about how Bulgaria gets misrepresented and how people think of it as a reference to The Wombles. I remember one of my colleagues pointing out Bulgaria was a topic at a game show - an episode of Pointless or some other game show and the topic was Bulgaria - none of the questions were things that represented the country in any way - The Wombles were included. Checked it and were left being overly disappointed and heartbroken. But I also remember how one of my mum's friends living in the US commented that Bulgarians are angry that no one knows anything about Bulgaria or where it is or what it is and her pointing out that most people can't name all the states or even a fraction of them. Kapka refers to the fact that Bulgaria is so unknown as a "nameless wound". I find it quite interesting - the power of names in her novel. Like the names of streets, or the name for a wound and the name changing of streets. Names have their significance places.
THEMES
The book centers and encourages the idea that money and good property are the backbone of happiness. In a quote: "Pavlina, however, was always upbeat, as if the limp, the excruciating walks, and the drugs that made her swell up were irrelevant details. I concluded that living in an old apartment, with a leafy courtyard full of cats and blossoms, probably compensated for everything else." I found it very interesting because she talks about the propaganda of the East block/communism but forgets to acknowledge the propaganda of the West where happiness CAN and should be bought. She starts questioning this western propaganda, however, when she goes to Colchester and sees miserable people that have evrything her family so desperately craves.
Time is displayed as stagnant: "'Listening' to the news was like 'reading' The worker's Deed, which was the only national paper, and seemed to simply rearrange the same content on its pages from day to day, year to year" which drags into the idea that nothing will ever change. In a way it connects with the themes of powerlessness because if you're stuck in time you're surely stuck with a situation you cannot change. Which begs the question if maybe emigration is indeed the answer because time-space is connected, and if you're not at the same spot where time doesn't move then time will go on at the new place. But time is also the enemy, because some things take time, which people don't always have. She displays it in her description of her childhood home now (after time has finally moved on at least a little bit): "Just a fraction of all this would have made a difference to us, the Cold War Youths - just one tree, one playground, one ful shop, one pizza" Time heals traumas and changes the world but for her time in Bulgaria was never moving forwards towards change.
Another common theme was powerlessness. Which is fitting for a childhood, where you are indeed powerless and depend on your parents so much. "Because if she succumbed to the forces of darkness, what hope was there for the rest of us [..] I had lost her to that unnamed darkness that slowly drains luminous people first of their dreams, then of their beauty, and finally of their lifeblood".Powerlessness can lead to attempts to break from this feeling by any means possible, in her case it means starvation: "And if you can't do anything to the world around you, you do it to yourself" And since we're referring to governmental abuse and orwellian past, fear is present: "And so the body of the tragic Tatiana kept falling endlessly, in slow motion, from the top of that collective block of flats where we all huddled in fear. Nobody knew who might be suicided next."
The neverending theme of duality - past/present, foreign-home, dream-reality. The main duality has to do with the lack of stable national identity:"My deep suspicion is that it's possible, perhaps even inevitable, to live between - no, among - nationalities" She is constantly trying to make sense as to where her nationality stands. She often sees it as a middle ground or an ever-changing variable. Nationality is touched upon many times and one of the ways in which she looks into it has to do with nationality as a disruptor to personality: "A few weeks alone in the country of your childhood wreaks havoc on your imported adult personality". In such a way, it's almost a book in search of her. Her nationality is something she's trying to escape from but here comes the duality - she can't escape it, she will always have the two passports and she'll always question which parts of her remain in Bulgaria. "Here, we are the top crop export of Socialism. With several passports, foreign spouses and ex-spouses, dynamic careers, borrowed identities. And fractured psyches. Here we are, trying to heal ourselves". Nationality becomes a trauma in a sense, a trauma tied to her "borrowed" identities
IMPRESSIONS
One of the problems I had with this book was that the first part made me cry so hard and the second - yawning so bad. It wasn't well balanced and her disconnect with Bulgaria really showed in the second part where her attempt at connecting was mere facts and her own discomfort from being at places she felt she no longer belonged to.
I thought I'm gonna love her book. I thought she was gonna find peace with her past and the place she had grown up in. I thought I'd see another immigrant's point of view and get some positive insights into any of the troubles that come with being an immigrant. This book, however, had no intention of showing positive sides to Bulgaria or a different perspective of being an immigrant. I still enjoyed the first part a lot and despite my disappointment feel like I read and learned a lot. I feel like connecting with the troubled mind of Kapka did something good for me internally because it still made me feel understood in regards to many feelings I've had over the years.
This book was commissioned to sell to the Western audience and that’s all it did
This book was commissioned to sell to the Western audience and that’s all it did
kamckim's review against another edition
5.0
Very interesting glimpse into real life for kids growing up in Bulgaria in the 80s, right at the end of Communism. But it's so much more. It's a poet, coming to terms with her identity, sharing her people and her country with us, which is a gift. In a way, her story reminded me of the story of anyone who grows up being indoctrinated and then getting out. It takes a long, long time to figure out how you really stand, the parts you love, the parts you want to hang on to, the parts that you can't forget. The details, the descriptions, the history--well-crafted, well-told. Pleasure to read.
constantreader471's review against another edition
4.0
This book is part autobiographic and part travel. The author grew up in communist Bulgaria and left, along with her family, after the fall of communism. The first third of the book is about what it was like to grow up in communist Bulgaria. The rest of the book is about how capitalism has affected Bulgaria, told through a series of return visits over the years, visiting family and friends. She writes about poverty, corruption and change, some of it good, and some of it very depressing.
I enjoyed reading it and give it 4 out of 5 stars.
I enjoyed reading it and give it 4 out of 5 stars.
yanailedit's review against another edition
3.0
I invite any Westerner who thinks of Communism positively to read this, not because I want you to denounce your political leanings, but because it is your duty to inform yourself about the history and reality of the society you're clamouring for.
People call this book 'biased' or 'one sided'.
It is both and of course it is: it's an account of the author's personal experiences growing up in a brutally unequal society during a violent regime. Individual life experiences tend to be like that: one-sided and biased. It wasn't Kassabova's goal to balance her life experiences with others' expectations of a balanced or favorable discussion of the finer points of life under the USSR in Bulgaria.
If you want a 'fair' portrayal of the Soviet experiment, go read all 700 pages or Svetlana Alexeivich'ss Second-Hand Time where she painstakingly collects the oral accounts of dozens of Soviet citizens from all sides of the political spectrum and life experience. You'll quickly learn that no one can agree on whether the USSR was good or bad: different people had different experiences and luck, along with the different ways they attached importance, gave attention to, or justified different facts of life (good or bad). Usually, these disagreements stem from people assuming that those with the opposite opinion to theirs are lying, exaggerating, or purposefully ignoring; you aren't the first to think that way and it's a phenomenon that's torn apart hundreds of families across the ex-Soviet world: those who hate and those who miss the USSR. It isn't propaganda, if you are aware of the formal term's definition, but an expression of different experiences.
Perhaps there were many big-picture positives omitted by Kassabova's account. That shouldn't surprise you if you know anything about Soviet history and the fact of its complex inequalities. This is where you should consider how propaganda has informed your perception and expectations of the USSR: when you roundly rejected the COMMUNISM=BAD of the West, did you keep a willingness to recognise the sincerely tragic and perverse realities of the USSR? When you began to accept positive depictions of the USSR, did you consider that most of what was allowed to exist in the USSR and what survives today are heavily-state sanctioned accounts and that you are subject to positive USSR propaganda with no real critical accounts to balance it with?
My main gripe is with how certain paragraphs seemed to jump onto the next thought, as if cut short and dropped. Still, I can sympathise with the hesitation and loss for words that I imagine this stems from. After all, speaking about one's Soviet upbringing to outsiders is a frustrating, perplexing endeavour more than anything else. You don't know what's weird and of interest, not even after a lifetime spent living elsewhere, because you were raised never knowing any differently. As for the rest... well, no one enjoys complaining or overly morbid stories; Westerners have a habit of exaggeration and it's deeply troubling to imagine people receiving your experience and writing it off as poetically maximised.
You won't find the Imagined Communist Sci Fi utopia most young Westerners seem to be consuming nowadays, but you will find an account of how the forcible implementation of vague, undefined ideals favor the corrupt, the violent, and the opportunistic.
That's the story of every extremist idealist social experiment.
People call this book 'biased' or 'one sided'.
It is both and of course it is: it's an account of the author's personal experiences growing up in a brutally unequal society during a violent regime. Individual life experiences tend to be like that: one-sided and biased. It wasn't Kassabova's goal to balance her life experiences with others' expectations of a balanced or favorable discussion of the finer points of life under the USSR in Bulgaria.
If you want a 'fair' portrayal of the Soviet experiment, go read all 700 pages or Svetlana Alexeivich'ss Second-Hand Time where she painstakingly collects the oral accounts of dozens of Soviet citizens from all sides of the political spectrum and life experience. You'll quickly learn that no one can agree on whether the USSR was good or bad: different people had different experiences and luck, along with the different ways they attached importance, gave attention to, or justified different facts of life (good or bad). Usually, these disagreements stem from people assuming that those with the opposite opinion to theirs are lying, exaggerating, or purposefully ignoring; you aren't the first to think that way and it's a phenomenon that's torn apart hundreds of families across the ex-Soviet world: those who hate and those who miss the USSR. It isn't propaganda, if you are aware of the formal term's definition, but an expression of different experiences.
Perhaps there were many big-picture positives omitted by Kassabova's account. That shouldn't surprise you if you know anything about Soviet history and the fact of its complex inequalities. This is where you should consider how propaganda has informed your perception and expectations of the USSR: when you roundly rejected the COMMUNISM=BAD of the West, did you keep a willingness to recognise the sincerely tragic and perverse realities of the USSR? When you began to accept positive depictions of the USSR, did you consider that most of what was allowed to exist in the USSR and what survives today are heavily-state sanctioned accounts and that you are subject to positive USSR propaganda with no real critical accounts to balance it with?
My main gripe is with how certain paragraphs seemed to jump onto the next thought, as if cut short and dropped. Still, I can sympathise with the hesitation and loss for words that I imagine this stems from. After all, speaking about one's Soviet upbringing to outsiders is a frustrating, perplexing endeavour more than anything else. You don't know what's weird and of interest, not even after a lifetime spent living elsewhere, because you were raised never knowing any differently. As for the rest... well, no one enjoys complaining or overly morbid stories; Westerners have a habit of exaggeration and it's deeply troubling to imagine people receiving your experience and writing it off as poetically maximised.
You won't find the Imagined Communist Sci Fi utopia most young Westerners seem to be consuming nowadays, but you will find an account of how the forcible implementation of vague, undefined ideals favor the corrupt, the violent, and the opportunistic.
That's the story of every extremist idealist social experiment.