Starting Over

by Sonja Brown

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 141376519X
• ISBN13: 9781413765199
• Release Date: June 2005
• Publisher: Publish America
• Length: 164 Pages
• Weight: 0.47 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 8.5" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

A compelling read with interesting historical context

Starting Over tells the story of a young man named Antonio who escapes the hopelessness of life in post-World War II, Communist Yugoslavia in hopes of finding his way to America and a new life of freedom and opportunity. He's a most sympathetic character early on, having grown up in a poor, dysfunctional family, and you have to admire his determination as he makes his way over the border to Italy at the age of sixteen, gladly takes on the hardest of jobs, and does whatever he can to retain his new-found freedom. In time, he ends up in Hamburg, Germany, signing a two-year contract to work in a coal mine in that labor-depleted country. It is there that Antonio's story, and Antonio himself, begins to change. Antonio works terribly hard all day, but he spends his nights in the company of alcohol and loose women. Then he meets a young lady named Sophia, who inspires a new kind of feeling in his heart. Sophia, for her part, falls in love with Antonio and eventually becomes pregnant. At this point in the novel, I would argue that it becomes Sophia's story more than Antonio's. Sophia is a wonderful, albeit hopelessly naïve, character. Once she seeks Antonio out to tell him about the baby, their fates are linked together. She will go on to accompany Antonio to America, with little Sonia in tow, and she is the character who truly must start over in a strange, new land, thousands of miles away from all her friends and family, with no one to lean on besides an increasingly distant husband. No first novel is ever perfect - well, maybe one - and Starting Over is no exception. The writing can be a little choppy at times, and certain thoughts and ideas are sometimes repeated on adjacent pages, yet I was caught up in the story from the start and very interested to see what the outcome would be. I think, judging from the short bio that I have read, that some degree of the author's own life experience went into the story, and I think that goes a long way toward making the novel as compelling as it is. The story of Antonio's hard life as a boy in Communist Yugoslavia and his daring escape to freedom is inherently interesting for its historical context. It is also instructive to see the American Dream through the eyes of a foreigner - and to see the great lengths a refugee is willing to go in order to escape poverty and oppression for a chance at a life of freedom and opportunity. The experience of Eastern Europeans trapped behind the Iron Curtain for decades seems to be fading fast from Western consciousness in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. Not only does Starting Over remind us of the hopelessness of life under Communist oppression, it also gives us a rare glimpse at the struggle of the German people, especially the women and children, after so much of their country was devastated by Hitler's war. I think the focus does shift in the second half of the novel, though, as human interest assumes the reins of the reader's attention.