The Glass Garden is a Bildungsroman about an orphan, live-proven girl. Although the subject implies the risk of melodrama, the author avoids the trap through a stylistic masterpiece. Taken from the orphanage by a Russian woman, Lastochka is forced by her adoptive mother to pick up empty bottles and wash them, in a yard of miracles in the Chișinău of the 80s.
The story of Lastochka implies several themes: search of identity, construction of feminity and the maternal theme, along with an intense orchestration of sentiments and resentments of both love and hate. In a gripping way the author creates the day-to-day universe, scene after scene, one touch after the other. The girl-woman-mother recalls her childhood, unreal and miraculous as it was, as well as her adult metamorphosis, torn apart by a tragic maternity.
The novel contains an undisputed historical, even political dimension, which touches the themes of Bessarabian-Romanian relationship and the fall of communism. The subtle tension is controlled not only by thematic, but also through challenges both in vocabulary and topics. Elliptic and passionate, Tatiana Țîbuleac´s writing is about the searching for our place in the world.
This project has been funded with support from the Creative Europe Programme of the European Commission.
Tatiana Tibuleac (born 1978) is a Moldovan-Romanian writer. She was born in Chisinau and studied journalism and communications at Moldova State University. She first gained renown for her "True Stories" column which appeared in the Flux newspaper in the mid-1990s. She also worked as a TV reporter and news anchor in Chisinau. She moved to Paris in 2008.
She published her first book Fabule Moderne (short stories) in 2014, and her first novel Vara în care mama a avut ochii verzi in 2017. The novel won multiple literary prizes and has been translated into French and Spanish. Her second novel Grădina de sticlă won the EU Prize for Literature.
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