From the introduction to the end, this book if fantastic. There is plenty of background given so it's easy to read the actual story part of the book and not feel like you're missing anything. I especially loved the parts where the family had finally immigrated to America and were trying to adapt to life there.

The title put me off reading the book. I thought it would be a boring history lesson for a place I don't know very much about. But after reading the intro and the brief history lesson in the very beginning where the author broke down the facts behind some of the story it made me realize that this is the perfect way to do history. Take actual events and throw in a little fiction to really get people connected to the story and history being told.
I won't give anything away for you but if you are reading the reviews for this then you must be interested already. This is a great book, that in a way brought home George Orwell's 1984 for me. To realize that these atrocities were happening to people and all the struggles they had to go through each and every day is heart breaking. It just goes to show that shouldn't always believe what you are told.
The story starts with the family in Romania and the son/brother has defected to France. The story progresses through what happens to the families of people who defected and then into the family making it out. The story follows the daughter Irina while she's in America and some the obstacles she faces not only when she first gets there but also years later.
The only issue I had with the book is that I hate Irina's boyfriend. The dude is a straight up creep. Me not liking a character should in no way dissuade you from reading this book. It is possibly one of the best I've read lately and I am sooooo happy I happened to receive it. ( )

This book is written in three parts. Each part examines a different phase of the Romanian characters' involvement with the post-Stalinist movement. Part I examines the the emotions and physical events of living in Romania, behind the Iron Curtain. Part II examines how those characters adapt to their new foreign homes, once deciding and achieving immigration. Part III creates generational movement.

This book created emotional awareness with the characters while they were still living in Romania. However, it became increasing difficult to connect with the characters as they dealt with their inner totalitarian demons once physically safe outside of Romania. Once the characters became flat, it became more history than story driven.

Overall it was a good book. ( )

Received a complimentary copy in a LibraryThing Member Giveaway.

Moscovici's Velvet Totalitarianism serves as the title of the edition, with an author's Introduction geared toward students of political science. The novel itself is entitled Reincarnations of Love, alluding to a subtheme of Romanticism (both the intimate ideal and the aesthetic tradition). In fact, this subtheme ties together three parts of the novel which otherwise feel like very separate works.

Much of the tale is inspired by Moscovici's family experience, as acknowledged in the Introduction. Given that confession, it is hard not to read various parts of the story literally, and not merely as inspired by or loosely analogous to the author's family history.

Part I deals with life behind the Iron Curtain in post-Stalinist Romania, apparently one of the most abject societies in the so-called Second World. While clearly not relating the average Romanian's experience under Ceausescu, this part of the story can be read as an ideal type: the plot is almost James Bond in its unlikelihood, but brings across the dynamics and pervasiveness of the Securitate.

Part II takes up the immigrant story of some characters introduced in Part I. James Bond is, for the most part, left behind. Intrigue is sidelined except to lay the groundwork for Part III through characters who, though recently emigrated from Romania, are not yet free from the emotional wreckage of Part I.

Part III recounts events during Romania's Velvet Revolution and the fall of State Communism around the Eastern Bloc in 1989-1990. At this point, the story struck me as too far-fetched. The Hitchcockian role of the Everyday Man caught in international intrigue suddenly pivots and characters become central to the historical fall of Ceausescu's regime. The shift seemed at odds with the rest of the story, and took away from my overall appreciation.

My biggest disappointment is in not getting a feel for life under Ceausescu's fear-based regime, though the circumstances were described liberally enough. The prose was very factual, realist, and if anything overly detailed in a quotidian way. I think my sympathies lie with more elliptical, stylised depictions of the psychology and patterns of life under totalitarianism. As a straightforward capsule of the obstacles and hardships a Romanian family faced, the novel serves well enough, and the stories suitably link these facts together.

Moscovici never explains why she refers to Ceausescu as Petrescu throughout. Her Introduction, in fact, is a very helpful primer on key aspects of Romanian political history and pointedly refers to Nicolae Ceausescu and his wife, who keep their given names in the novel but are stylised Petrescu. It's especially confusing since a Nicolae Petrescu figured in pre-Stalinist Romanian politics. I wonder if it's a Romanian in-joke. ( )

Overall the book is a fun and quick read. However, I think the author would have had a better book to serve her intended purpose if the book ended at Part I. Part I is about the family's struggle in Romania and depicts the typical Eastern European condition of that time period. For those people who are not familiar with this particular period in history, the book will probably be fairly eye opening. Otherwise, it will not be too surprising.

Part II is where my problems start with the book. Although the aim, I suspect, was to show the difficulties of assimilation into US society, the book just falls flat. It *IS* a good story, but at this point it becomes painful clear that it is just a story and as such the book loose a lot of its previously gained momentum. The characters quickly become fictitious and the read is no longer particularly worried about the outcome, which completely destroys the purpose of Part I.

So as a story its a good and quick read; moreover its definitely worth picking up and reading. As a hallmark work aimed at revealing the state of Romania under communist rule, it should have ended at Part I.