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Book: 'Journey to Self'

Author.

Genre: novel

Rating (1 to 6): 5

Blaga Dimitrova is one of my favourite Bulgarian writers. I'm sure it's not just me. Her writing is so different, circumstantial, detailed and descriptive without being heavy. Like a kind of flow of thought without actually using such a device. It's like she just takes the reader into her thoughts, drops them into her head and walks them through the multifaceted pathways of her mind.

She's all interesting personality. Besides being a famous writer, before and after '89, she was the first vice president of the Republic of Bulgaria in 1992. Translated and respected in many countries, Blaga is a writer to whom others before and after her are compared.

Her novels take me back to the past, to my own past, reminding me of the thoughts of my 18-year-old self. I've read Diversion, Urania, and Avalanche, and Journey to Self is a story I've long anticipated falling in love with, and somehow that's why I've put off reading it, to prolong the moment of anticipation, the excitement of what's to come, of knowing that somewhere out there is my future favorite read.

The novel tells the story of 18-year-old Raina, who spends two years (the best years of a girl's youth) of her life on a brigade in Rila in the 1960s. Through a flashback, Blaga Dimitrova tells us how she ended up in this brigade - she, a young Sofia woman, with a musical education, just on the verge of applying to university. She talks about the people she works with, the dorms she lives in and the girls she shares them with. About what it's like to be part of the collective, she gives a description, backed up with stories that will just knock you over. It will make you want to share your room with 7 other girls and learn how to work on a construction site with a dozen other young men, just to experience how your heart beats with the collective heart, how you are part of a big, powerful whole.

The climax of the story, of course, revolves around the first love of the heroine Raina. The first naive tremors and fantasies, the jealousy, the image of the other woman, the image of the beloved, her own image through their eyes.

And the climax appears to be a deeply kept secret, hinted at from the very beginning of the book - who is Raina really? Why has she run so far from home? Why is she a girl with no last name and no future?

Read "Journey to Self" and look for yourself through the eyes of Blaga Dimitrova. Let her remind you of things long forgotten, tremors and show you pieces of yourself that you would otherwise have a hard time finding. Travel with her, travel through yourself.