The Shadow Land

Years ago I read and loved Elizabeth Kostova's The Historian. So I didn't think too hard when I saw this book at the library book sale. It just went straight into my bag. I guess I assumed that it would be about vampires, too. And I was mildly disappointed to discover that there was nothing at all supernatural here.

This is the story of a woman who travels to Bulgaria. She accidentally takes the bag of a family when she helps them into a taxi, and when she discovers that the bag contains a man's ashes she vows to return it to the family. Her own taxi driver agrees with this, frankly insane, decision and they spend the next several days driving all over the country, slowly learning about the life of the man whose ashes they carry.

The man's life story is told in parallel through flashbacks and stories. His story was the more interesting of the two, and finding out what happened to him is what propelled me through the book. I learned a lot about Bulgarian history that I hadn't known before, though sections of that history were difficult to read about.

Overall the story was really interesting and very sad. But the overall novel didn't quite come together for me. I'm glad I read it, but I might not be so quick to pick up any more of Kostova's books. At least, not without doing a bit more research first.

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