Romance Language

by Alan Elsner

Part love story, part historical drama, part coming-of-age novel, Romance Language begins in 2007 as 17-year-old Petra runs off from college and shows up in far-away Romania on a quest to find the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0916620905
• ISBN13: 9780916620905
• Release Date: October 2009
• Publisher: Portals Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Age Range: 17 years and up

Customer Reviews

Engaging & Oustanding

I found Alan Elsner's, Romance Language a wonderful story that drew you in from page one. The descriptives were outstanding and at times I felt I could not only see the characters but smell them as well. This is an ideal book for book clubs as the historical aspect of the book will evoke great discussion. It was wonderful to have such a well written story take place in another culture. This too gives us Americans a glimpse into life outside the U.S. I LOVED this book and could not put it down. I read it cover to cover in a weekend. lc

A very enjoyable quick read

Because I am in two book clubs I have read more than the average person. Some books start out promising and then lose steam well before the end and it is a slog to get through them. Others never manage to grab me at all from the get go. This novel suffers from neither of these problems, as it is an enjoyable read from beginning to end. The author is articulate with a sense of humor and a clear understanding of some of the more subtle aspects of feelings and relationships. He also obviously is familiar with both modern Romania and the Romania of the late eighties. I enjoyed his use of letters and emails between the mother and the daughter in addition to his clear mastery of dialogue. I would actually give the book 4.5 stars if I could because I wanted to see a bit more in-depth and extended descriptions of the setting and the people (the author made it obvious that he was capable of this multiple times during the novel but I would have preferred to see more) and because the character of Tom was never fully developed. But these are minor distractions and overall, the novel is highly recommended.

Superb ...

Alan Elsner's ROMANCE LANGUAGE reminded me very much of DOCTOR ZHIVAGO ... a passionate love story between two totally unlike lovers at a unique and violent time in history. But there the comparison ends, as ROMANCE LANGUAGE is simply a beautiful book, direct, spare and impossible to put down, whereas I found Pasternak's masterpiece to be hard going. Elsner knows his subject from having actually experienced Roumania firsthand, and it shows in the tiny and lovely details he covers, in the characters of his American women, Liz and Petra, and the wonderful character of Stephan (whom I will candidly admit I found the most compelling character in the book -- the ultimate romantic hero battling both forbidden love and the system in which he lives). His professional background as a writer and editor is a gift to his readers, as he sketches scenes and characters swiftly and memorably, with each scene building on the previous one and every relationship being fully delineated. There are few works of literature that one can truly consider unflawed, but ROMANCE LANGUAGE seems like one that has it all: Three-dimensional characters, a solid grounding in the historical background, a feeling of poetry in the prose, a pace that won't let you quit reading and a love story we live right along with the lovers. I give it my highest recommendation and urge all readers of similar books to put it high on their to-do list, right now.

Loved it

I see there are a number of articulate reviews that include my own experiences of this novel, so let me say quite simply that I SO enjoyed Romance Language. I found it to be an educational and eye-opening view of what happened in Romania in the eighties and also a totally believeable and interesting love story, or pair of them as it were. The writing is velvet....easy to slip into. And I was rather impressed by a male author's ability to get into the heads of his female characters. Highly recommend!