Peacocks' House

Peacocks' House. Whitest Day A debut novel is always surrounded by an aura of mystery. What can a new author say in a literature where, as it seems, everything has already been said? Well, Andreea Nanu has to say a great deal of things in her book. True, things which have been said before, but it is also true that our entire life is made up of things which have been lived, said and heard before, things which have repeated but still seem like new experiences, even as unique discoveries. And, of course, unique may be the way in which things are being said. The author is an aesthete in the manner of Gaston Bachelard, with a passion to distil strong essences from daily images. Each page becomes a tourney of daring correspondences which do not hit, but invite with subtlety our imagination to discover the miraculous, the fragmentary, the portrait, the fugitive detail, the fragile sensation, gathering everything with the meticulousness of a collector who allows herself to be fascinated by the games of memory. - Antoaneta Ralian Andreea Nanu had the courage to write a Beautiful book, at a time when ugliness becomes the supreme aesthetic criteria. And by her courage, going almost defiantly against the current, Peacocks' House (Whitest Day) is not only a profound book, but also a very modern one, in the sense that Modernity can be a fragment of Eternity. - Ana Blandiana Andreea Nanu's novel comes from blessed narrative times, as a breath-takingly surprise in today's literary landscape, characterized by abrasiveness. I am convinced that its reading would have been a delight for Mihail Sebastian, Anton Holban, Henriette Yvonne Stahl or Lucia Demetrius. This does not mean it is out of tune with its own time, only ex-centrical compared to the actual literary expectations, attracted by vice, heresy, abuse and spiritual decadence. It is a novel that requires readers with vigorous morals, made out for lyrical propensities, dream, nostalgia and cultural passions, brought up in a world capable to under-stand that Sensuality and Spirit are one and the same, like music and painting. And above all: to accept that the Past determines and fertilizes unceasingly our present, whether subtly, mysteriously, or passionately, expansively. A novel out of love for the Ineffable. - Dan C. Mihailescu