PURGE: in a war context, this word reminds us of sad memories, deportations, camps, extermination, and so on. I have a little hesitant to start this book, and rather advantageous to criticism, and témoignange a few people from my professional colleagues who had read it, I threw myself.
From the beginning, I entered the story, or rather stories: on one hand the old Aliide, an Estonian peasant only inhabitant of an isolated farm on the other Zara, a young Russian girl landed there coincidentally, in the garden, a day of intense cold, and filigree, a kind of diary, kept by a certain Hans Pekka Estonian nationalist and clearly not free to move ...
Aliide, distrustful and unwilling to be criticized by its neighbors, hesitated a while before giving food and shelter to Zara, which explains his presence by his flight vis-à-vis an alleged husband who beat her.
The old woman listens, but does not really believe the "girl" as she calls it in his thoughts.
And slowly goes out the truth for the reader, a family drama, but linked to the political situation in Estonia during the Soviet occupation, a time when everyone looked upon well behind him all the time, he was not sure not to get to the other side of the country upon termination of a neighbor or, worse, a relative.
The writing is simple, stark, and even more violent in the relationship of painful events experienced by the protagonists.
The story also prompts us to ask ourselves whether there is any forgiveness after a betrayal, also remembered for the French, a period also troubled ...
As at the end, I got it taped, but should I be so naive?
Odile