Guest Book Review: V.B.’s Take on Requiem for Barbara by Branka Čubrilo
Please welcome our guest reviewer today! Let’s see what she has to say. Take it away, V.B…
Thank you! ♥
Requiem for Barbara by Branka Čubrilo
This book tells the story of a daughter’s journey to understand her impressively complex mother who died too young, and frankly lived life too hard. Through a series of letters and visits with her father, her mother’s parents, and her mother’s lost love, Lora gets a taste of her mother as a person. But, getting her questions answered didn’t help her as much as she’d hoped.
The writing enabled me to take the journey with Lora in an never ending pursuit of truth through knowledge. At the end, she got what she thought she wanted, only to learn this did not give her the results she’d hoped for.
Finding our place in this world is hard. And the only way to get there is to experience situations like Lora’s. I found the book cathartic and confusing at times…which was how I think Lora must have felt. Meanwhile, it helped define what a true identity crisis can feel like. And it gave me a taste of the immigrant experience.
NOTE: I was provided a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.
I give this book 4 stars because it was full of complex people and reflected true living.
Book Blurb:
When Barbara dies in Sydney, Australia, her daughter Lora finds a series of hidden letters addressed to her estranged father, Ted. Upon reading the letters, Lora realizes that she never really knew Barbara, except as a mother. She uncovers family secrets, sad and hurtful lies, and an array of fascinating people she never knew had made an impact on her mother’s life.
Spurred by these new facts and discoveries, Lora decides to travel to Europe, to her mother’s hometown. In a chance encounter, she meets Davor — a world-famous, yet mysterious figure who was the cause of both Barbara and Lora’s happiness and sadness, as these emotions emerge entangled, intertwined by his story and fascinating past.
The novel traverses Sydney, London and Düsseldorf, where the characters grapple with identity, belonging, and how we find solace amongst life’s biggest challenges and questions.
Universal Reader link: https://books2read.com/u/3JelNA
Here’s an excerpt from the book…
My mother has died. For days after her burial, I did not know where to turn to. I am eighteen years old. I only had her; she died believing so.
She left me a small apartment, furniture, paintings on the walls, a computer desk, and the computer on it. My first thought, my first impulse, was to sell all her belongings, to liberate myself from the unbearable pain. The pain sat on my chest and shoulders and in each moment, it seemed to me that mother was going to step into the living room from her study, deprived of sleep. The pain never lessened, but I understood that all around me was what was left to me after her passing away. Whatever I looked at, it spoke of her.
Soon after her death, I sat at her desk in her study. My mother was a writer, and that was the way she tried to make our living. I always believed she was the best writer in the whole wide world . . . but she didn’t have much success. She published several short stories in women’s periodicals, a collection of poetry . . . she was far ahead of her time.
Sitting there at her desk, I started to pull the drawers out to examine their contents. The contents in the drawers were in perfect order―which was not typical of my mother. She was not the victim of any kind of order.
In the lowest and widest drawer, I found a cardboard folder tied up with a yellow ribbon. On the folder was written ‘Letters to Ted’.
So, it looked like―she still remembered Ted. It was quite a thick folder as it contained numerous sheets of paper. I started to read the papers in the order they were placed.
Hi Ted,
It was raining on the day you walked out. Miserable, it looks like rain accompanies all separations. I can’t even call it separation, as you left without a word. Lora came in and asked me what was written in the letter I was holding in my hand. I said, “Ted’s gone”. She fell silent. In her angelic eyes, I saw sadness. She did not cry, her petite, narrow face battled with a wild storm of emotions. Then, she said quietly, “He’s gone for good.”
She knew that you had gone forever this time. I nodded my head. I could not utter a word, I was afraid of my own voice. She never cried for you, Ted. You coached her how to handle her emotions. After a while, they called me from her school. They told me her marks had dropped; her eyes were red and teary, often. I explained that her father had left us. Her father, Ted. You (who would doubt it often), you are her father. There were too many discrepancies between us, Ted.
When we got married, I was already pregnant. I conceived a child with you. When you left, I did not know whether that was better or worse for Lora. We were teaching her different things, constantly. The things that were valuable and honorable in my culture and tradition were unimportant and cheap to you. You had contempt for tenderness, calling it weakness; you mocked sincerity, calling it indiscretion. The things she had to hide from you she would whisper in my ear at night when I would come into her room to tuck her in.
You would say, “Why are you covering her five times every night? You will spoil her, make her weak. Let her toughen up.”
Why did you allow her to walk the streets barefoot in winter? It used to horrify me. It used to horrify me!
You never asked me anything about my country nor about my past. Why? Were you afraid I might ask you the same questions? It all was below your interest, below your level. And so, my own past was suppressed in some strange liminal space where I had sealed the doors tightly shut. (They were sealed with padlocks, one thousand tons heavy, a thousand tons of silence, a thousand tons of concrete . . . with padlocks that seemed as if they would never be unlocked, or broken, with padlocks rusted like the ones in the stories of locked princesses . . . like the ones in the stories with a tragic end, because the main protagonist fell ill of a rare illness that came from a silence weighing one thousand tons . . .)
But look, now I want to tell you: I had my country, and I had my past. Even though it looks like a dream now, dreamt long ago (which I dreamt when I was very young), but the one I still remember. You hid your past, for you were not proud of it; it was not ‘good enough’ for you; therefore, you narrated a different one. I could not talk about my past because you were not interested in it (as if it were shameful). But I was proud of it.
My first and only love was a painful affair. I left because of him, believing (still too young to understand) that I would forget him.
Six months have passed since you left. Lora has never asked about you. Since you left, she has been very quiet, her self-esteem has been very fragile. She has completely lost interest in the violin. When I ask her, what would make her happy, she only shrugs her shoulders and says, “I don’t know.”’
That’s how the first letter my mother wrote to Ted ended. I did not know were these copies of the letters she sent to Ted, or were they letters Ted never received? Letters never sent.
My mother was unhappy. I understood that from the first letter. Anyway, I always felt her sadness. (She carried me inside her!). I believed that her sadness came from Ted’s departure and the difficulties of finding a publisher for her novels. But I was wrong. She was not sad because of Ted’s leaving. I was sad because of it. I felt that in these letters, all her life was contained―the history of her hometown, her family, and the history of one love. I put down that letter and with trembling fingers, I took another.
I slid my fingers down the sheet of paper. All her letters were written on the same date―on the second day of June every year until the last one. Every year on my birthday, she wrote him a letter about me and about her. And about Dado — her first love. Why did she do it?
Barbara was sad. Her sentences were heavily colored with cynicism. I never knew her being cynical. If she did not love him, why did she reproach his departure so much? Wounded ego? Or was it because he left her without any money? Or was she so sad because of me?
Tears were rolling down my cheeks while I picked up a new letter. The letters danced in front of my teary eyes.
BOOK INFO:
AUTHOR: Branka Čubrilo
TITLE: Requiem for Barbara
GENRE: Literary Fiction, Drama, Family Literature
RELEASE DATE: May 25, 2023
PUBLISHER: Speaking Volumes
ISBN/ASIN: B0C6FSWFDD
OUR RATING: 4 stars
REVIEWED BY: V.B. “Can Do Indie Author”
Guest Blogger/Reviewer Bio:
V.B. is an indie author who writes romance and Sci-Fi, and voraciously reads anything (with some limits). When she’s not reading and writing, she’s working a day job to pay for her truck habit and puttering around her house.
Great! Thanks for this review, Virginia, and for stopping by the blog! :)
Check out our latest Writing in the Modern Age blog post here.
Originally published on September 16, 2023 at https://writinginthemodernage.weebly.com.
