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by Simona MihuȚiu (Author), Ovidiu Cornilă Consta Cornilă (Translator)
The novel "Sick Bonds" was built on the ancient myth of the three Furies, the vengeful goddesses of the Darkness who weaved human destinies with their spindles of yew wood, twisting the past, present and future of the earthly, plotting their fates and punishing them for their crimes. Clotho reeled, Lachesis weaved, and Atropos, the "one of no return", as her name implies, cut the thread of life. Maybe justice was being done, maybe they were merely fulfilling the human inevitability, or maybe it was just hatred punished by other hatred.... Evergreen, blooming in the dead of winter, healing at times, it can be at the same time, highly toxic - good mixed with evil.
The theme of the novel deals with an existential drama, that of the central character, Amalia Aludean, at the age of senescence, carrying the burden of a broken destiny, of an unfulfilled love, of betrayal even by her own sister, Malvina Prudel who flees the country illegally with Dorian, Amalia's fiancé, to settle in the USA. Amalia Aludean bears the stamp of unhappiness passed down from generation to generation. The imprint of the past is visible and locked in her own experience, like fossils in an amber amber, a symbolic element (Amalia's amber ring). Amalia's drama becomes acute when Lili, her and Dorian's daughter, decides to leave for the USA, and will reach madness when Lili dies in a car accident. Amalia refuses to accept the tragic outcome, ignoring reality, hanging on to the illusion that her daughter is still alive, even if far away, "across seas and lands".
The arrival in the country of Malvina, the treacherous sister, at the height of the COVID pandemic, and the realization that she was behind the wheel at the time of the unfortunate accident in which Lili lost her life, trigger the springs of hatred. Amalia, however, knows how to disguise both hatred and psychological degradation or facts, and the yew flowers reappear obsessively in the pages of the book, with suggestive power.
Malvina dies in suspicious circumstances. It is Marlene, Malvina and Dorian's daughter Marlene, who unravels the mystery, discovering in Amalia, her aunt, a person whose mind is ravaged (she mistakes Marlene for Lili) by the burden of hatred. Marlene also has the task of overcoming hereditary tragedy through forgiveness and love.
Book translated into English by: Ovidiu Constantin Cornilă
