Bottled Goods by Sophie van Llewyn

First published in the UK in 2018; published by Harper Perennial on July 28, 2020

I would not classify Bottled Goods as magical realism or absurdist fiction, although the novel has surprising elements of both. Most the novel tells a straightforward story of a Romanian woman living under the reign of Nicolae Ceaușescu. She desires freedom — from her mother, from an oppressive political system, and eventually from her husband — but comes to understand that freedom is not an automatic guarantor of happiness.

In 1967, Alina Mungio is living with her mother. Alina’s Aunt Theresa regards Alina’s mother as one of the “low people” in the family but maintains a good relationship with Alina. Theresa’s husband and sons hold significant positions in the Party, giving Theresa more opportunity and less scrutiny than is typical for those who lack her connections. Theresa believes in and practices mystic rituals that been handed down for generations. Theresa’s mother shrunk Theresa’s father to hide him from the authorities after the Communists came into power. Alina’s mother wanted nothing to do with Theresa and once threatened to reveal where her father was hidden. Suffice it to say that Alina’s mother earns little sympathy during the course of the novel and, in the minds of many, will get what she deserves.

Two years later, Alina is working as a tour guide and translator for German tourists at a luxury resort. There she meets Liviu, another German-speaking guide. Their marriage gets off to a rough start on her wedding night and goes downhill from there. Life becomes even more difficult when Liviu’s brother defects to France, a decision that taints Liviu and Alina by association.

Alina and Liviu make their own plan to defect, but during much of the novel, they are fending off interrogations and trying (not always successfully) to stay out of jail. Alina also has to worry about her mother, whose betrayal of Alina’s grandfather is a small step from betraying Alina. Much of the novel’s dramatic tension focuses on whether the couple will be allowed to cross the border into Germany on what they claim is a trip in support of Liviu’s archeology research.

The final chapters breeze through several years of Alina’s life. Most of those years take place after the fall of Ceaușescu. The chapters seem like an afterthought, although they do add a sense of symmetry to a novel that might be seen as the story of Alina’s life. The most effective scenes occur while Alina is still in Romania, as she submits to interrogation and worse to avoid imprisonment. Alina’s fear and sense of helplessness gives the novel a harsh realism that counterbalances its mystical moments.

As is true of The Tiger’s Wife and other novels that assume the reality of local mystical beliefs and rituals, the reader will need to accept the reality of magic (or something similar to magic that allows the laws of physics to be bent) to appreciate all aspects of the story. Since the story is set in a country that routinely serves as a background for vampire fiction, it isn’t difficult to accept the story’s mystical elements. They certainly don’t overwhelm the larger story of a woman’s desire for freedom and her uncertainty about what to do with it. What does freedom mean to a woman who is never really free from the unwanted attention of men, no matter where she lives? When one finally has the freedom to make choices, will life necessarily be better than it was when choices were dictated?

Sophie van Llewyn has won awards for flash fiction, a literary form that doesn’t appeal to me. The flash fiction style is evident in the book’s construction. Chapters are short, each telling a brief segment of the story before moving on. Fortunately, Bottled Goods isn’t a collection of related flash fiction stories. Each chapter builds a foundation upon which subsequent chapters rest. The chapters integrate into a solid novel about the perils of living without freedom and the competing perils of living with it.

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