No Return Address: A Memoir of Displacement

by Anca Vlasopolos

Book Overview

No Return Address is a vivid memoir of a life in exile and a poignant meditation on pleasure and loss, repression and transgression, and the complexities of love under harsh human conditions. In recounting her life's journey from Romania to Paris and Brussels, then on to the United States, Anca Vlasopolos writes movingly of the peculiar attributes of displacement in the contemporary world--the hyphenated, ambiguous identities; the purgatory...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 023112130X
• ISBN13: 9780231121309
• Release Date: October 2000
• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

oral transgressions

This is the most moving and meaningful memoir I have ever read. The author tells a personal history, a national and international history, as well as a short history of western thought in a way that ties together beautifully. Near the start of the book, it is said that religion is a control over what goes into and out of the mouth, and this metaphor sticks with the incredible telling/story-telling throughout.

AN EXTRAORDINARY BOOK

A stunning memoir of enormous power--a work both accessible and phenomenal. This book, with a lyric and incisive style, uses the politics of appetite, language, and other modes of communication (or censorship) as a lens through which to describe the author's and her family's (primarily her mother's) lives and various displacements. Filled with vivid details that range from the nightmarish (the stories Vlasopolos's mother tells her of Auschwitz) to the exquisite (the precise flavor of sour-cherry liquor, or the burnt-sugar smell of the Paris Metro), this memoir is at once a story you can't put down and a poem you never want to end, whose every phrase makes your breath catch in your throat with wonder. The book combines the personal with the political movingly with a seeming effortlessness that is as fascinating as it is impressive. A hauntingly beautiful book: no one should miss this.

A Life Well Written

I don't usually read autobiography, but -- since I very much liked Anca Vlasopolos's mystery novel MISSING MEMBERS (and have been waiting in vain for a sequel) -- when I saw this title by the same author, I happily took a chance. And I'm glad I did. NO RETURN ADDRESS has enough plot and incident for several novels (and as many movies; I kept visualizing the possibilities and casting the lead roles). It's vividly written and reads like poetry. Vlasopolos's life (and those of her concentration-camp-survivor mother and political-prisoner father) is intrinsically interesting, but -- even if nothing had ever happened to her and her family -- her writing would make the whole thing compelling. My favorite part among many is the Greekly tragi-comic incident involving the author as a little girl, a treasured out-of-print book of plays, and a playful puppy.

A Mother of all Memoirs

"No return address" is unlike any book I have read since my own exodus from the Communists. The long journey from corrupt "Socialist" Romania to the West under Anca Vlasopolos's pen unveils unexpectedly some of life's greatest lessons and the delivery is impeccable...like a Stradivarius in the hands of a music teacher's teacher!

A Memoir That Matters

Anca Vlasopolos writes movingly about trying to find a place in the world. Her exploration of worlds interior and exterior will take readers to places both more terrible and more wonderful than can be imagined in fiction. The emotional connection between the author and her mother is beautifully told and affirms the endurance of true love. For those who question the value of reading the memoir of one who is not a celebrity, this is the book with answers. No Return Address connects us to remarkable people who struggled through and survived some of the worst travesties of the 20th Century, and reminds us about what connection itself is all about.