Stork Mountain

Starred review from December 21, 2015
This first novel from Penkov (author of the story collection East of the West) is about a boy who leaves America for the desolate borderlands of Bulgaria in search of his grandfather. Looking for a way to pay his debts, he returns to the village of Klisura, on the Bulgarian side of the Turkish border, to find out why his grandfather fled the U.S. and his family, and to claim an inheritance he believes is his. The young man discovers a place where exiled Christians dance on fire in honor of their saints, where Muslims were converted and given new names by a cynical Communist regime, and where storks come each spring to bear their own young in giant walnut trees. The village is steeped in mysteries and vendettas. The boy absorbs the folklore and also begins to glean his grandfather’s tragic involvement in Klisura’s troubled past, “like stepping stones that lead you to yourself.” The boy falls in love with Elif, the daughter of the local imam with whom Grandpa has a long-standing feud, meeting her in secret in a stork’s nest in the trees. He plots to save Elif from her abusive father, and to rescue Elif’s little sister, who is sick with a fever believed to be induced by the nestinari, the Christians who dance on fire. That the boy ends up finding himself within his grandfather’s story, among the gnarled and mystical roots growing out of ancient Christianity, Islam, and communism, is the great reward of this searing, heartfelt novel. This book is rich, enmeshing the personal with the political and historical, told in strange and vertiginous language that seems fitting for a tale of such passion. Agent: Nicole Aragi, Aragi Inc.

January 15, 2016
A man returns to his native Bulgaria from America and receives an education in family history, romance, and local folklore. The narrator of Penkov's debut novel (East of the West: A Country in Stories, 2011) is a broke graduate student. In hopes of a financial boost, he heads back to the mountainous patch of Bulgaria his family fled during the Communist era, looking to sell off his share of family land. But his grandfather has already sold that land, which is being developed into wind farms (threatening the highly symbolic migratory storks). That gives the story its initial conflict, but the drama Penkov means to conjure up has a longer reach. The family home sits at the confluence of Turkish, Greek, and Slavic cultures, as well as Christian and Muslim faiths, and the story draws on regional folk stories, most prominently the nestinari--"fire dancers" who perform rituals to sanctify the place. As the narrator becomes increasingly immersed in the local society, he learns more about his grandfather's complex history and also falls for Elif, the seemingly unattainable daughter of a local imam. "Don't bloody your hands with superstition, stay away from the madness," our hero is cautioned. But he can't quite resist it. Penkov can write elegantly about history, folklore, and mythology--which he means to argue are very much part of the present--and the early push and pull between his hero and Elif has humor and tension. But the novel doesn't persuasively mix its varied elements, sometimes overlayering the grandfather's back story and local lore. And though the chapters are typically brief and breezy, they're often bogged down in wooly observation, softening the impacts of the tragedies and revelations that mark the closing chapters. An earnest and somber tale of rural life that gets tangled in its metaphorical brush.

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February 1, 2016
Penkov's (East of the West, 2011) strangely haunting story of love and need and superstition weaves together past and present and is heavily seasoned with myth and mystery. When a young American, a Bulgarian ex-pat, sets out to find his grandfather who abandoned the family several years ago, he has one thing in mind. Due to the oppressive debt he has accumulated to pay for his college education, he wantsno, needsmoney he believes is rightly his. But is he simply seeking money, or purpose and self, as well? Or is he running away? Maybe only a twentysomething can conflate these, since that is a time in one's life when many things can legitimately be intertwined. As he attaches his hopes to his grandfather's stories, he becomes involved with a young woman whose Muslim family is being torn apart by religious superstition. Penkov holds a loose rein on this brimming, well-written, yet somewhat unwieldly love story/bildungsroman set at the confluence of three countries and multiple religions and cultures, a novel deeply reflective of today's tumultuous geopolitics.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2016

In this mashup of myth, folk tales, and a modern love story, a Bulgarian American college student arrives in the Strandja mountain village of Klisura, hoping to reconnect with his estranged grandfather and maybe cadge enough money to pay off his student loans. Instead, he becomes immersed in the lives of the Christian and Muslim townspeople who live uneasily side by side, sharing a history that dates to Attila the Hun. From Elief, the delightfully rebellious daughter of the local imam, the young American discovers the secrets of the spring stork migration and the centuries-old ritual of the fire dancers. In the evening, after imbibing a local liquor, grandpa unspools his own stories of politics, magic, love, and loss. But when the forbidden attraction between the two young people turns to talk of marriage, grandpa fears that his own sorrowful history may repeat itself. VERDICT Penkov's story collection, East of the West, a finalist for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing, concerns itself with borders, both physical and metaphorical, as does this debut novel. The author uses gentle humor to soften the vast differences among various factions in Klisura, grandpa and the imam, the Catholic Church and the educators, the ecologists and the builders, all while writing a love song to his native land. [See Prepub Alert, 10/5/15.]--Sally Bissell, formerly with Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Fort Myers, FL

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2015

Bulgarian-born Penkov's stories have won the BBC International Short Story Award and the Eudora Welty Prize, and his collection, East of the West, sold to 12 territories, was a finalist for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing and the Steven Turner Award for First Fiction. In his debut novel, a disillusioned young Bulgarian immigrant returns home, then attempts to find his vanished grandfather. He ends up in the Strandja Mountains close to the borders with Turkey and Greece, witnessing both pagan and Christian rituals, and falls dangerously in love with a Muslim girl.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.