THE BLACK AND THE GREEN

How would each of us feel or behave if our daily life, the world we grew up in and in which we knew all the ways and rules for surviving, turned nightmare? What would we actually do if the government not only removed all protections from us but set up methods so that anyone who wanted our home or belongings could legally and easily take them? And, in the meantime, the government itself forbade us to own a bicycle, a car, a radio, a store, office or profession, or to go to a park or a movie, ride on a bus, or be in a group of more than three people. How would we feel and behave?

This book (written fluidly by the new and exciting voice of a brilliant writer who lived through the process) is a search into human nature under extreme conditions. For most of the protagonists it was not that "they killed you" but that "they wouldn't let you live." Many others were murdered (often in a random activity where it was made even harder for the survivors to bear in that the killing was not personal, but just because it was open season on people like you and your family, and you and the killers were accidentally at the same time and place).

In this page-turner of a novel, we watch the process develop and proceed largely but not completely through the eye and life of an adolescent girl. This is not a memoir although many of the characters are drawn from real persons and it depicts true major historical events and their effects on people like us. It is written with a unique combination of objectivity and compassion that seems to be the author's trademark. (We saw the same family, the Steins, and most of the same protagonists in her earlier novel Prelude to the Black and Green.) Nicolescu shows her people with such compassion and respect and draws us into such empathy with them that we feel like saying with Kipling:

I have eaten your bread and salt. I have drunk your water and wine. The deaths you died I have watched beside, And the lives you lived were mine.

And this is one of the things that makes this novel outstanding and not to be missed. You are a witness to the character, dignity and plain everyday courage of normal human beings, who found themselves living in a full-fledged nightmare surrounded by people who had become armed and rabid wolves, and found within themselves strength and resilience that had never been expressed or known before.

Other writers have written well of the unbelievable killing and sadism practised in the Holocaust and of the pain and suffering inflicted in the horror. I know of no other writer who shows so well, and bears such witness to, the decency, courage and steadfastness with which it was often met. Plato wrote of those characteristics "which keep human beings on two legs instead of four." Here we see how often people express them even under terrible conditions.

Nicolescu's writing style is, I believe, unique: crisp, taut, and yet filled with warmth. It reflects her deep immersion in classic French literature and her knowledge and response to modern writing. Imagine, if you can, the same author penning Hemingway's The Old Man and Sea and Flaubert's Madame Bovary. That might, I think, result in a style similar to Nicolescu's.

You finish the book feeling better about being a member of the human species and a little more confident about the hidden reserves of heroism you yourself will be able to draw on if and when you come to a dark time. Reading The Black and the Green I was reminded of the time years ago when I worked in a terminal cancer service. Nothing previous in my life and training had prepared me for the courage and strength of the patients there. In as horrible a situation as I could envision they showed great fortitude, altruism and love. Often I was asked why I continued to work in a place of such consistent pain, suffering and loss. It took me a long time to find the answer. "Because it makes me more proud to be a human being." This book leads one to have the same feelings.

Nicolescu's experience, empathy, respect and writing skills blend together so well that she, with A.E. Housman, seem to be saying to the reader:

'Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale Is not so brisk a brew as ale: Out of a stem that scored the hand I wrung it in a weary land. But take it: if the smack is sour, The better for the embittered hour; It should do good to heart and head When your soul is in my soul's stead; And I will friend you, if I may, In the dark and cloudy day.