Verwandte Artikel zu The Story That Cannot Be Told

The Story That Cannot Be Told - Softcover

Kramer, J. Kasper

 
9781534430693: The Story That Cannot Be Told
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1534430695 ISBN 13: 9781534430693
Verlag: Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2020

Inhaltsangabe

“By turns surprising, poetic, and stark, The Story That Cannot Be Told is one that should most certainly be read.” —Alan Gratz, New York Times bestselling author of Refugee
“A mesmerizing debut.” —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

A powerful middle grade debut with three starred reviews that weaves together folklore and history to tell the story of a girl finding her voice and the strength to use it during the final months of the Communist regime in Romania in 1989.

Ileana has always collected stories. Some are about the past, before the leader of her country tore down her home to make room for his golden palace; back when families had enough food, and the hot water worked on more than just Saturday nights. Others are folktales like the one she was named for, which her father used to tell her at bedtime. But some stories can get you in trouble, like the dangerous one criticizing Romania’s Communist government that Uncle Andrei published—right before he went missing.

Fearing for her safety, Ileana’s parents send her to live with the grandparents she’s never met, far from the prying eyes and ears of the secret police and their spies, who could be any of the neighbors. But danger is never far away. Now, to save her family and the village she’s come to love, Ileana will have to tell the most important story of her life.

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

J. Kasper Kramer is the author of the acclaimed novel The Story That Cannot Be Told as well as The List of Unspeakable Fears, Eyes on the Sky, and Serpent on the Mountain. She’s an author and English professor in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She has a master’s degree in creative writing and once upon a time lived in Japan, where she taught at an international school. When she’s not curled up with a book, Kramer loves researching lost fairy tales, playing video games, and fostering kittens. Visit her at JKasperKramer.com.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Some Poetry About Socialism

Some Poetry About Socialism
When my father arrived home from the university, his face sallow and sagging as if he were sick, he dropped his briefcase on the kitchen floor and braced himself at the sink.

“He’s gone. They’ve killed him,” he said.

At the table, my mother set down her copy of Femeia magazine. She glanced at me before she stood, took Tata’s hat from his head, pulled him toward their bedroom door, and shut it quietly behind them.

It was mid-July in 1989, and the electricity in Bucharest was off more often than on. Our tower-block concrete apartment building baked us like cabbage rolls in a clay pot, so we always let in the breeze through the balcony doors. I had been sprawled out on the living-room floor beside my Great Tome, the warm air tugging at the pages of my stories. Now I laid my coloring pencil aside and stared, my heart thudding faster with each sound that came through the wall.

The apartment was so small you could see it all at once: the balcony where we dried our clothes, the living room and kitchen stuffed together, the tiny bathroom, my parents’ bedroom, my bedroom. My mother liked to say—when my father wasn’t there to stop her—that if we were again forced to move, they would squeeze our whole family into a closet. She missed the apartment we’d had before, with the dining room and the pantry and the corner office that held her piano. I didn’t remember it, since we’d had to leave when I was a baby, but I knew my parents had only been able to keep what could be carried. I knew they’d only been given a day.

As I sat there, tense and listening, I couldn’t stop thinking it would happen again—that whatever had frightened my father would force us to pack up without warning and leave. I wondered how much worse things would get if we moved. When the Leader had torn down our first home to make room for the wide, gaping boulevard and the palace, he’d stuck us, like everyone else, into horrible gray concrete buildings, stacked one after another, all the same. Sometimes I would imagine my family’s life before then: our pantry stocked full of bread and jam, my father’s books lining the walls from ceiling to floor. In my memory of a place that I didn’t remember, we always had enough food, and the hot water worked on more than just Saturday nights. We could bathe whenever we wanted, even in winter when the central heating went out.

But I collected stories, both made-up and true.

And I was usually good at spotting the difference.

My family had never had enough food. We’d never had enough hot water, enough space, enough light. At ten years old, I could already see how everyone, even me, talked about before in a special kind of voice and with special kinds of words. If we believed that before, things were better, we could imagine they’d be better again. This was the way we survived.

There was a loud thump behind my parents’ bedroom door, something striking their dresser. I jumped when it happened again. Muffled sounds came in great, rolling waves: my father’s words rising, my mother suppressing the swell. I knew she didn’t quiet him because of me, not really. She did it for the neighbor whose ear might be pressed to the wall, for the passerby in the corridor who might pause, fingers feeling in pockets for a pen. It was always best to assume someone was listening.

When the door finally opened, I knew I must have looked frightened, so I pretended to be busy writing in my Great Tome. I was working on “The Baker’s Boy,” a retelling of a parable from school, but my eyes couldn’t focus on the words. I kept glancing up at my parents, who had settled into silent preparation for dinner. I tried not to think about who might have been killed, distracting myself by drawing loaves of tan-colored bread around the edge of my title page. But when the sun dipped low, its fading light turned all the Great Tome’s colors to ugly shades of gray, so I tucked the book under my arm and carried it to the couch.

With the power still out, the TV screen was just a dark reflection of me holding my stories, but I sat down and stared at it anyway. Thinking about the movies I loved made me feel a bit better, even if I knew there was no chance I’d see them. We used to get two channels that had shows all day long. My mother still talked about when they’d aired the one from America with the man in the cowboy hat, which always ended with somebody shot or in a car that exploded. But now we only had one channel, just two hours a day during the week, and it didn’t air shows like that anymore. The programming was usually boring: speeches given from inside the grand palace; televised sessions of the Communist Party, the little men on the screen all cheering together, booing together, raising their fists; broadcasts that reviewed the state guidelines on “rational eating” or politely reminded viewers of local curfews.

On Sundays, though, Gala Animation would come on, and we’d get five whole minutes of a cartoon. Everyone I knew who had a television made sure not to miss it. Last summer, over the course of several weeks, I’d caught all of 101 Dalmatians and bragged to the other children when we went back to school. This summer they were showing The Aristocats, and the last episode had left the poor kitties scared and alone out in the country. I wouldn’t get to see the next five minutes till the weekend, but if the power came back tonight, our handmade antenna might pick up something good from Bulgaria, and my whole family might sit down to watch. Then, just like always, we could leave behind whatever horrible thing had happened.

Luck seemed to be on my side, at least for the moment, because as we were setting the table, the electricity flickered to life. I asked my father, “Can I turn on the fan?”

Sometimes he said no. The taxes were very high if we went over our energy allotment. But tonight he didn’t even look at me. He just gave a little gesture with his hand, which I took for a yes, then sat down in his place. The lines around his eyes and behind his big glasses looked deeper than usual, and I began to worry he might really be sick. At the table, the wind blowing through my choppy brown hair, I turned my gaze down and picked at my food. Pie with eggplant and potato but no meat. The queue had been too long at the butcher’s. When the line manager had told me and my mother that it would take five hours, maybe six, to get our rations, I thought she’d make us take turns waiting, but instead we’d simply gone home.

Nibbling a stale piece of bread and avoiding as much eggplant as possible, I did my best not to complain. My father was still quiet. The sickly look had not left his face, and I kept glancing up, wanting someone to speak. I knew they wouldn’t tell me who was killed or why, because they’d never told me before, but the longer everyone went without talking, the more anxious I grew, thinking that this time it had been someone important.

When I could no longer take it, I did what I always did with silence. I tried to fill it with a story.

“Do you want to hear the new one?”

“Maybe another night,” my mother replied.

My stomach fluttered. My cheeks flushed. They never said no.

I returned to poking at my...

„Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Verlag
Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Erscheinungsdatum
2020
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1534430695
ISBN 13 
9781534430693
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
400
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV
info@simonandschuster.nl

Herculesplein 96
Utrecht
3584 AA
Niederlande