REVIEW | ‘THE SHADOW LAND’

My previous encounters with Elizabeth Kostova have been mixed. I loved 'The Historian,” but I was less than thrilled with 'The Swan Thieves.” As a result, I approached 'The Shadow Land” (April 2017, Penguin Random House) with a bit of trepidation.

Within two chapters, I was sucked in. Within two days, I was 50 percent complete with the nearly 500-page novel. The story, characters and scenery are magnificent. Kostova does a beautiful job describing the scents and sounds of Bulgaria. I could see, feel, hear and smell the country. By the end, I wanted to visit Bulgaria and experience it for myself. So score one for Kostova for taking me mentally to a country I never before considered visiting.

The story itself takes two paths. In the present we follow Alexandra, a troubled American travelling to Bulgaria for a teaching job when she is unexpectedly thrown into a potentially life threatening situation. Her journey, pulls her out of her shell and helps her to see life in a new light. Her journey and forced reliance on strangers teach a wonderful lesson. Sometimes we get wrapped up in our problems that we forget that others might be able to offer some comfort that will allow us to understand ourselves and the world better.

The second path is in the past following Stoyan, a concert violinist with big dreams in an Eastern-Bloc country post-World War II. Here, Kostova paints a grim picture of post Bulgaria. Stoyan makes his own journey toward redemption, which reveals some of Bulgaria's darkest secrets that are connected to Alexandra's journey in the present. The storylines mesh well and drive the plot forward. If you read closely, the reveal unrolls itself quite nicely.

Two things stand out as issues for me as a reader, and they are relatively minor. First, Alexandra is traumatized by the disappearance of her brother, but little is done to explore that issue. That plot point is left dangling with no resolution. Second, the ending was a little too perfect and somewhat lackluster. It seemed tacked on and was not as strongly written as the rest of the novel.

Regardless, Kostova managed to pull me running through a rather lengthy emotional novel in less than a week. Since the rest of the story was so tightly woven, I was hoping for a bit more punch at the end.