5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
Bitter-sweet memoir of a people decieved, 
This review is from: The Pigs' Slaughter (Paperback)
How long does it take to kill a pig, or execute a dictator? How easily is freedom won and lost in a web of deceit? And who will weep at the funeral of a good Communist? Author Florin Grancea was a fourteen-year-old boy in Romania, helping his father slaughter the family pig while Ceausescu's regime went to the wall in 1989 and the world looked on. Memory flavors his account in The Pigs' Slaughter with sights and sounds of family farm, gritty and poignant details on pig-killing, sausage cooking, mouth-watering, Christmas-cake-rising delights, all set against the background of a black-and-white TV set and news colored with lies. Hindsight offers truth behind the agony and irony, bitter-sweet as well-boiled wine.
Freedom beckons while father hopes the Russians will stay out and son wishes for shoes. But freedom turns out less sweet that it was imagined. The author salts his tale with the darkness of coming poverty and the death of his country's beloved traditions. Democracy wears fake jeans, as false as imagined terrorists and cruelly staged destruction. His people deceived, the author looks back and invites readers to see the falsehood of our own promises, or at least to open our eyes; remember what we've had before we lose it; and build on solid ground.
The history of two world wars is woven into the tale of five days in December just as seamlessly as the future and present day. The voice is consistent, the opinions fierce, and the facts well-researched by a boy turned journalist. The author's memories seem painfully, achingly real, right to a final scene of death, false victory and true forgiveness. I want to taste those Christmas treats. I mourn their loss and the loss of innocence. And I salute an author whose writing has brought it all to life.
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