We are conditioned to love happy endings. As a child I learned about the prince who overcomes all obstacles to win the heart of the beautiful (and innocent) princess and holds her happily ever after in his muscular arms. Later I read Romeo and Juliet, aware by then that tragedies happen.

When writing fiction, one must decide between realism and a world where reality is ignored. No hero is only good, nor is the villain only bad. Complex fictional characters are a mosaic of light and darkness, (red and black or straight up and upside down) their negative and positive traits creating a portrait readers will contemplate.

The plot is an extension of that same dilemma. A character’s actions can engage or distance the readers. Cultural differences matter. Societal norms, too. What was taboo yesterday might be acceptable or even admirable today.

Since I grew up in another country and write in two languages, I noticed a difference in how some of my stories are perceived in Romania versus the US. In my novella SMOKE, the main character, Doru, is a Romanian immigrant in Denmark, who gets arrested for manslaughter. In his diary, Doru confesses to being a wife abuser and to having beaten his own father, when, years earlier, the father returned home from a communist prison. Still, he sees himself as the victim of a sad childhood and a rough youth. It turns out that Doru is a bad guy, a member of the Romanian Secret Police.

The novella was very successful in Romania, and a well-known Romanian movie director asked me to turn it into a screen play. (The project foundered for lack of financing.) To this day, Romanian films made by famous directors such as Radu Jude (“Aferim”) and Cristian Mungiu (“RMN”) are dark and depict a gloomy Romanian society troubled by the skeletons in its closet.

Yet, my American readers disliked the novella, complaining about the dark realism with which I had depicted the main character and the authoritarian society which influenced him.

I guess Romanians remember what it means to be forced into political compromise, to survive in a world where most are victims and the law doesn’t apply equally to everyone. Americans like heroes. Happy endings. Sunshine and blue skies. So far, most have been spared having to compromise.

But how do I, as an author, reconcile my two worlds? What do you, my readers, think?