Train to Trieste - Domnica Radulescu

Mona is a teenager growing up in Bucharest under the reign of the brutal dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Like many middle-class families she and her parents spend a few weeks every summer first holidaying on the Black Sea coast and then staying with family in the city of Brasov in the Carpathian mountains where the coolness brings relief from the intense summer heat. On one of these trips, when she is seventeen, Mona falls in love with Mihai, a mysterious dark-haired student who lives in Brasov. Mona makes a beeline for Mihai whom everyone is saying killed his last girlfriend with a rock, trying to comfort him in his grief and the two quickly fall deeply in love. Or so Mona ...  Read the complete review