Adrift by E. J. Bancesco, a review by Diana Milne

About the book:

A return to his native Romania offers a unique opportunity for Boston architect Luca Leontin to come to terms with his past; instead he becomes enmeshed in the vengeful designs of a man with whom he shares a life-long history of passion for art, as well as an indelible bitterness over the love of one woman. Luca finds himself drawn to the Circe, the infamous Bucharest night club, where the illusion of erotic fulfillment could cost him his life. From a totalitarian society that crumbled in December, 1989 to a contemporary world gripped by fear of international terrorism, Adrift is a study of cultural dislocation and the ensuing alienation that triggers both our yearning to return to our origins and the hopeless need to find what is lost forever. This is a story of obsession and revenge, and, above all, the survival of love despite the corrosive action of lifelong mistrust and suspicion.

This year I have been fortunate in reading some outstanding new authors and E. J. Bancesco is up there with the best of them. Bancesco's superb and well crafted debut novel "Adrift" had me gripped from page one and I fell totally under the spell of charming, confused, suave, vulnerable, urbane and very human protagonist, Luca Leontin. By chapter three found myself more than a little  infatuated! Luca is so well written, so approachable, I also wanted to protect him, sensing that under the urbane sophistication there was the child and adolescent that never fully grew up; one who was still reaching to find his past.

A serial adulterer, Luca has left his revered wife and daughter safely in the capsule his mind has reserved for worship and travelled to his native Romania for the first time for many years. Whilst on the train journey across Europe, he begins to read one of his old notebooks, reviving memories of his first loves, Daria, Maia and Adriana  and his conflict and rivalry with artist Alecu Moldovan over the love of one of these women and a picture, two pictures, drawn by our eponymous hero.

Reading these memories causes in him a nostalgia for the days gone by, but with it a fear that they would come back - Luca is now a man of fifty, but one feels that his emotional make-up remains deeply entrenched in his adolescence.

In essence we have two stories in one book; the story of the younger Luca, told through his notebooks and memories and through reminiscences with family members and friends. The author has cleverly used his 'voice' to emphasis this, the younger Luca passages being told in a far more hesitant way as if feeling his way in an unsure world, and the older Luca is a smooth and flowing style. Whichever voice Bancesco is using, the prose is elegant, thoughtful and evocative. The descriptions of the view from the window of the train were so beautifully written, yet using such a very few words, that I can still picture each scene as it is passed.

"When he opened his eyes, it took him a moment to ascertain whether he was awake. The train was gliding without the slightest sound, dream-like. The sun had descended somewhere ahead, and the ripe, soft light left in its wake cast long shadows across the valley outside the window. In the distance, the Alps rose blue and diaphanous."

Scenes from his childhood remain as etched in my memory as in Luca's ...

"The Siret of that time still had its wild beauty; it flowed pristine and chill as a mountain river, rarely warm enough for bathing. Carp and perch hadn’t yet routed the chub, the sucker, and all those sparkling wild fish."



 

Beautiful, memorable, powerful words.

 

Depending on whether the time that is being talked about is in the past or the present, Bancesco skilfully alternates between 1st and 3rd person and this adds greatly to the sense of time and place. Another clever ploy by the author is used very effectively. Characters, for example Tante Amalia, have their own 'verbal tics' making it easy to distinguish one from another and adding to the rich fabric of the narrative and the realism of these people. 

 





Random characters drift in and out of the story, weaving their threads in the tapestry of our mind - the German man on the train, the man with an Adam's apple as big as an elbow - cameo appearances that add a richness and depth to the fabric and an indelible imprint on the reader.

Occasionally throughout the book I wondered, 'why is the author telling me this?' but however long I had to wait, there was always a reason and no random bit of information was casually dropped into the narrative without reason.

On an ill fated trip with his daughter Emma in 1990, Luca and Emma encounter a group of gypsies who utter piros - red - often and with great emphasis whilst playing cards. For ever afterwards, all either one of them had to do was to utter that word piros, for the whole of that journey and time to come alive. I loved this delightfully human observation. The whole of a Cornish holiday was evoked in my family by the words, 'Pig, pig, pig.'

Unusually for me, I read the book very slowly, pausing now and then to better digest the story line and to not waste a word. The book is classified as the genre 'Cultural Heritage' but here are so many other categories in which it could comfortably sit with it's historical element in the first half, the love stories, the travel and suspenseful second-half embracing terrorism, intrigue and murder, the revolution and downfall of the Ceaușescu regime.

Romanian history over the past 60 years was interwoven with the story in a way both necessary and shocking. I feel ashamed that I knew so little, only what we in the UK were fed by various news agencies with their own agenda.  The account of the revolution in 1989 was accurate and moving. Luca by then was living in America and he gets the detailed news from his friend Gabriel by letter. It is  painfully realistic account and like often throughout the book, I had the impression I was reading something far more intimate than a novel.

Through the life and words of Luca, Bancesco explores the nature of love and how it alters or stays the same through the ages. During the course of the story, in various ways, he re-meets all the previous loves of his life and finds them (and himself) changed and yet unchanged. I found reading about love and the thin line that can divide love and desire in a man a fascinating insight. So often this is a subject that is written about (often in a cloying and sentimental manner) by a woman, so to read a realistic account of the way a man's mind works on this subject was enlightening and refreshing and also not so very different from the way a woman's works, when stripped of all sentimentality........

During the course of the book Luca experiences the sexual love of many women, but in such a beautifully written way and so subtly talked about that there is nothing offensive or smutty, and  the reader is left feeling that Luca would care for any woman in his life and never boast about them as conquests, even in his own thoughts.

After he encounters the enigmatic Florentina, sent by the even more enigmatic Irina, in his habitual night time haunt, the famous or infamous Circe nightclub in Bucharest, things begin to take on a sinister note and he finds himself part of an international espionage mission, which nearly gets him killed.

Coming full circle on his return trip and hoping to again meet Lujza, he returns to the strange club, Hébe-Hóba, (the site,in the first part of the story,  of one of the most erotic cooking scenes I have ever read.)

He stopped across the street from the two-story corner building and looked at the neon sign hanging unsteadily above the door. The street level windows were boarded up, a detail he couldn’t have noticed before. In the morning light, his surroundings seemed at once strange and familiar. That moment of uncertainty reminded him of “The Secret of Dr. Honigberger,” Mircea Eliade’s spine-chilling story of a student who goes on a quest for the whereabouts of a disappeared physicist—his former professor—and finds himself knocking at familiar doors, haunting familiar streets, but gradually sinking in the realization that somehow he had been cast into another time. Luca wondered how the sight of two boarded-up windows could trigger in him such a disturbing sense of estrangement. He knew that he would never again walk through the door of that nightclub. The prospect of being face-to-face with Lujza for one last time, if only to share a square of almás pite, seemed as absurd an undertaking as time travel.

 

As reviewer Simone Camilleri so eloquently puts it:

 

 .... in the end we discover that Luca has not gone adrift without recourse. That is, in and of itself, a redemption, for it returns him to the hope and optimism of his childhood, as this epigraph for Part 1, so aptly highlights:

"… the green paradise of childhood loves … is for many a future in reverse, an obverse of hope in the face of the gray purgatory of adult loves."

 

This is an outstanding book and I urge you to read it both for  the enjoyment of an exceptionally good story, beautifully told, and for the sheer joy of reading Mr. Bancesco's beautiful words.

Adrift is available from Amazon.co.uk (click here) and Amazon.com (click here)

About the author:
Born in Bucharest, Romania, E. J. Bancesco graduated from the Institute of Architecture in Bucharest, in 1975. In 1983, he and his wife immigrated to the United States and they established their home in Boston, Massachusetts.

From 1998 to 2003, Mr. Bancesco studied advanced painting at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, in Boston. In 2005, he accepted a position of Principal at an internationally renowned architectural firm, and since then, has been practiced his profession domestically and across the Far East Asia.

Passionate about art, literature and music, Mr. Bancesco is a tireless writer.  His first novel Adrift, is the fruit of nearly 20 years of literary labor of love.  Currently, he and his wife, Luminitza, live in Chicago, Illinois.  They have a daughter who works for an NGO, on international humanitarian projects. 

© Diana Milne: May 2017

Diana talks to E. J. Bancesco

Author’s interview – 2017. Diana talks to...E. J. Bancesco, author of Adrift and The Scarf

 

Hello, it is lovely to have this chance to chat with you. Let's begin ...

First things first I am sure there is a question that you have always longed to be asked. Now is the chance. Ask your own question and answer it!

Q: Why do we write? Haven’t we learned how hard and unrewarding an undertaking this is?

A: I don’t know why. Perhaps, we don’t care about the pain and the ensuing disillusions, and all we’re after is the elation of having created an universe of our own.

If your latest book The Scarf was adapted into a TV show or a film, who would you like to play the lead role?

Maybe someone like Logan Lerman—but younger—who is both cocky and vulnerable, brave and fragile, and has a physiognomy that betrays his emotions easily.

What made you choose this genre?

I’m not sure I chose literary fiction. That I write within this genre is because this is what I’ve always gravitated toward, as a reader.

How do you get ideas for plots and characters?

From people who impressed, intrigued, scared or inspired me; from people whom I fell in love with, or hated with a passion. Every character I use in my stories must have at least one trait, either physical or personality-wise that stands out, that is memorable. And honestly, since I expect I know myself best, I am only in my stories  under one guise or another,

If, as a one off, (and you could guarantee publication!)  you could write anything you wanted, is there another genre you would love to work with and do you already have a budding plot line in mind?

Historical fiction, without any hesitation. In fact I started one but lost it in a computer crash, and have felt so inconsolable after that, that haven’t been able to tackle it again.    (I feel your pain )

Was becoming a writer a conscious decision or something that you drifted into (or even something so compelling that it could not be denied?) How old were you when you first started to write seriously.

I was eighteen, but never saw myself as  a writer. I wrote because I yearned for my childhood years, and wanted to read about it as if it weren’t mine. The notion of being a published author only crossed my mind very recently—some four decades later.

Marmite? Love it or hate it?

I don’t hate it; truth is, I couldn’t care less.

Do you have any rituals and routines when writing? Your favourite cup for example or ‘that’ piece of music...??

My schedule makes it hard to develop a routine. I write mostly late at night, knowing full well it’s the wrong thing to do, for when I used to write in the morning—some years ago—the inspiration and productivity were there, humming and buzzing through my whole being. Now I rely on weekends to ponder on plot and character development and sometimes I will come up with something that serves as material to be developed during the following week nights. As for music, yes, it’s the baroque—opera and orchestral alike.    

I promise I won’t tell them the answer to this, but when you are writing, who is more important, your family or your characters?

The least necessary strictness is to keep family at a distant bay while writing. The ideal is, family is absent.

Other than writing full time, what would be your dream job?

I’d like to travel for a living. I do like my day job—I am an architect with projects all over the world, and I do get on the plane once in awhile—but traveling without business partners and pre-scheduled meetings would be ideal; a professional traveller that, is, like Burt Wolf, Rudy Maxa, Rick Steves …

Coffee or tea? Red or white?

Coffee when writing – like Balzac. Wine comes after.

How much of your work is planned before you start? Do you have a full draft or let it find its way?

I think a great deal about the back story, because I want my novels to have one. At this point in time I approach plots from the standpoint of an innocent who is gradually sinking into the depths of the past. So yes, I start writing following a plan—trying to define that past and its main characters. But nothing is definitive; it’s all open-ended. This is a problem for me because it invites the nefarious writer’s block. 

If you had free choice over the font your book is printed in, what font/fonts would you choose?

Times New Roman is fine.

Imagine that you could get hold of any original source document. What would it be?

Gesta Hungarorum – telling of the Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin at the turn of the 9th and 10th centuries; revealing historical facts (or interpreted facts) concerning the history of Transylvania—and the Romanian people

Have any of your characters ever shocked you and gone off on their own adventure leaving you scratching your head??? If so how did you cope with that!?

What a timely question! Here is what I just wrote to accompany a Facebook post, just minutes ago:  Do you ever find your plot rebelling against your quill, claiming to know the path of the narrative better than you, the mastermind behind it all? Humour the unruly plot and tag along for a bit and you may find yourself facing a piece of writing that scares you. As a dear friend says “by Jove” this is good. I daresay, the best writing is raw with intense emotions. The best writing is scary.

How much research do you do and do you ever go on research trips?

I do research and yes, I travel with that purpose though it is shared with visiting my homeland. Other research takes me to books. I buy a lot of books.

Fiction authors have to contend with real characters invading our stories. Are there any ‘real’ characters you have been tempted to prematurely kill off or ignore because you just don’t like them or they spoil the plot?

Plenty. Each character has an alter ego in reality. The ones that qualify for a prominent place in my stories have gone through a prep session. From the least significant detail of their appearance to their principal defining feature, every trait will undergo and intervention, mostly an exaggeration, and enhancement. Sometimes the physiognomy of one will be given to someone else, etc. Alas, too often, much of that meticulous work proves a waste of time (save for its ‘lesson learned’ merit), because you’re right—I mean your question is  a very good one—some of them, once plugged into the story feel like interlopers, and either their welcome is short-lived, or indeed curbed on arrival.

Are you prepared to go away from the known facts for the sake of the story and if so how do you get around this?

I must be prepared for such situations, for next to style, the story is what makes a book readable—and admired. The way I deal with this, is, I place the action inside a fictitious realm and am suddenly free to chose the extraordinary, the poignant and the frightening, dimensions which sometimes reality does not provide; I am free to experiment with lying. After all, isn’t fiction the lie through which we tell the truth?

Do you find that the lines between fact and fiction sometimes become blurred?

Yes. Often. When I am deep inside my story (after my family has been sent to a far shore) fiction is the reality within which I exist, and just as reality is in turns hurting us, delighting us, scaring us, demolishing us, etc., so does the fiction I am creating, to a point where I feel myself a product of that fiction. Once this has happened, I get hurt, delighted, scared or demolished by it, just as happens in real life.  
(What a moving and poignant observation. Thank you for sharing that.)

Have you ever totally hated or fallen in love with one of your characters?

Yes. In fact, if I don’t fall in love with them—with her (let’s not beat around the bush), I simply cannot write. It’s like hating a character. How am I going to provide the passions and the hatred and all those others primordial emotions to my readers if myself do not feel them toward my characters? 

What do you enjoy reading for pleasure?

British Edwardian and Victorian dramas, medieval history and fiction set in medieval Europe, contemporary fiction such as the work of Anita Brookner and John Fowles, and works by the titans of Russian literature.

What drink would you recommend drinking whilst reading your latest book?

Cornas by Auguste  Clape (a shiraz from the Cotes du Rhone)

Last but not least... favourite author?

John Fowles

 

About the author

 

 

E.J. Bancesco is a practising architect, an accomplished fine artist, and a passionate writer. Born in Bucharest, Romania, he and his wife immigrated to the United States in 1983 and now reside in Chicago, Illinois.
Adrift is his first novel, published by All Things That Matter Press   in July, 2016.
His second novel, The Scarf, was released in August, 2016, by Hyperborea Publishing

© Diana Milne January 2017 © E. J. Bancesco, 23 March, 2017