Oana Aristide reads the opening pages of Astronaut!, her recently-released novel set in late-80s communist Romania. Astronaut! follows two main characters: an eight-year-old girl caught up in a rigged school contest and a detective ordered to pin a string of murders on a man-eating bear. Oana talks to Jon and Cory about:
- Why the opening was the last chapter she wrote, and also the most difficult
- Deliberating over the pros and cons of opening the book with humor
- The challenges of writing from the perspective of a child
- The trickiest aspects of writing in a fourth language
- Thinking and drafting in scenes rather than pages or word counts
- Her love of Chekov’s short stories
- Getting feedback from her two long-running writing groups
Oana's passage:
Sighișoara, March
Lia is being walked home by Comrade Blaga, the shopkeeper, who is holding her hand. A couple of times she tries to get out of this embarrassing situation, makes her hand go limp, or folds it together in the shape of a small bird wriggling out of a nest. But Comrade Blaga does not let small birds go.
They are walking by the road along the river embankment. It’s Mother’s birthday and also Friday afternoon, and the buses are bringing people home from the factories. From the corner of her eye Lia catches a glimpse of one, so full it’s almost dragging its belly along the tarmac. It’s an accordion bus – it has that creaky, bendy rubber bit in the middle – and there are people clinging to the steps and to its three wide-open doors, a bit like bees swarming to a hive.
Everyone on the passing buses can see her and Comrade Blaga walking home hand in hand.
The river is far below. Murky as always, barely moving along. Mother explained that it used to be higher up and wild, liked to burst its banks whenever there was heavy rain, flooding houses, shops and roads, and so the people made it live in this river-gutter instead. If the shopkeeper were not still holding her hand, Lia would be leaning over the railing, throwing pebbles into the trapped river.
It’s Mother’s birthday today and she has no present.
Lia couldn’t believe her luck when she first spotted the vase with a big yellow sunflower painted on it, couldn’t believe that it was something people could buy. And so today, Lia had pointed at it in the homeware shop, and Comrade Blaga took the banknote from her. He looked her up and down – it was then that the bad-belly feeling started – then he locked the door of his shop. There was no one else inside.
And now – no money, no vase, no hand.
