Peacocks' House

Peacocks' House. Whitest Day

• A debut novel is always surrounded by an aura of mystery. What can a new author say in a literature where, as it seems, everything has already been said? Well, Andreea Nanu has to say a great deal of things in her book. True, things which have been said before, but it is also true that our entire life is made up of things which have been lived, said and heard before, things which have repeated but still seem like new experiences, even as unique discoveries. And, of course, unique may be the way in which things are being said. The author is an aesthete in the manner of Gaston Bachelard, with a passion to distil strong essences from daily images. Each page becomes a tourney of daring correspondences which do not hit, but invite with subtlety our imagination to discover the miraculous, the fragmentary, the portrait, the fugitive detail, the fragile sensation, gathering everything with the meticulousness of a collector who allows herself to be fascinated by the games of memory.

  Antoaneta Ralian