25. I Must Betray You

I Must Betray You. Ruta Sepetys. 2022. [February] 336 pages. [Source: Library]

First sentence: Fear arrived at five o'clock. It was October. A gray Friday. If I had known? I would have run. Tried to hide. But I didn't know. Through the dim half-light of the school corridor I spotted my best friend, Luca. He walked toward me, passing the tedious sign shouting from the concrete wall. New men of Romania: Long live communism--the bright future of mankind!

Premise/plot: I Must Betray You is set in (Communist) Romania in 1989. For Christian Florescu, our narrator, his country's freedom (and independence) can't come fast enough. But dare he hope it will come at all? He lives--has grown up--in a country where literally anyone and everyone could be--might me--an informant. Every move you make, every word you speak--might just be used against you or your family. Christian knows this but is helpless...you can't be guarded twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. There have to be moments where you can just be... But those moments could cost him dearly. 

My thoughts: It is best to go into this novel--yes, it's probably "historical" fiction--knowing as little as possible about the plot. I found this a beautiful text in a haunting way. I found it to be a page-turner. It wasn't that I loved, loved, loved watching the pain go down. (I didn't.) But despite the emotional damage it will do to your heart--assuming you are a sensitive/empathetic reader--it was worth it. I knew very little about this time period. I had no idea how absolutely horrendous it was--not just for a few years, but for decades.  

This one might leave you at a loss for words, and that might just be okay. I do think the characters and the story will resonate with readers long after they finish the book. 

Quotes:

"Philosophy," nodded Bunu. "Soul nourishment. Sit for a spot in philosophy. You see, communism is a state of mind," he would lecture, tapping at his temple. "The State controls the amount of food we eat, our electricity, our transportation, the information we receive. But with philosophy, we control our own minds. What if the internal landscape was ours to build and paint?" Bunu spoke often of vibrant what-ifs. I pondered them in my notebook. How could we paint or sketch creatively? If the West was a box of colorful crayons, my life was a case of dull pencil leads. 

What films had some thick-fingered truck driver smuggled across West Germany, through Austria and Hungary, into Romania? We never knew when videos might arrive. Most illegal movies from the West were dubbed into Romanian by the same woman. No one knew her name, but more than twenty million people knew her voice. She brought us into a secret, forbidden world of inspiration.

How could we expect others to feel our pain or hear our cries for help when all we could do was whisper?

Betrayal. It's undigestible. It instantly changes the frequency of things. Every Romanian carried a world inside them, and mine had quickly gone from dark to black.

From the author's note: "When justice cannot shape memory, remembering the past can be a form of justice." ~ Ana Blandiana

© 2022 Becky Laney of Becky's Book Reviews