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A thoughtful and penetrating look at multicultural identity – the not-so-simple task of blurring and integrating who we feel ourselves to be, as we assume new roles in new countries, and in doing so, both chip away and attempt to fortify elements of our deepest being.

When a young Ana Sala, made free by the Romanian revolution, emigrates from Bucharest to Toronto, Canada, she leaves behind a former deeply-communist regime, that is never, of course, left fully behind her.

“Only in your own language you can remember things that you’ve never learned”.

Fear, distrust, aggression and self-preservation — there is no melting pot, Ana discovers, but rather a blended and incredibly diverse culture awaiting her – where opportunities abound, as pervasively as the loneliness and internal strife that now follows her everywhere. Forever on the outside, looking in, Ana’s struggles professionally are made complicated by her search for acceptance and belonging, made all the more difficult by a series of false starts in her quest for love and friendship. Everyone, it seems, knows what she needs, except perhaps herself, — her own shaky need for rootedness tripping her up repeatedly as she searches for, what she achingly needs to find, — validation through a sense of visceral kinship.

As Ana’s emotional connections, on all sides of the border, push and pull her in different directions — in parts tenuous, yet impossible to resist — the author examines motherhood, daughterhood, intimacy, belonging and betrayal, artifacts of attachment that seem to require, first and foremost, an emotive footing that, for Ana, remains elusive.

Haunting in parts, tragic in others, this is a well-written and disconcerting story, carrying threads of lingering emptiness, remaining for this reader long after this visit between the pages.

A great big thank you to the author for an ARC of this story. All thoughts presented are my own.