Four Minutes

by Nataliya Deleva, Izidora Angel (Translator)

Giving voice to people living on the periphery in post-communist Bulgaria, Four Minutes centers around Leah, an orphan who suffered daily horrors growing up, and now struggles to integrate into society as a gay woman. She confronts her trauma by trying to volunteer at the orphanage, and to adopt a young girl—a choice that is frustrated over and over by bureaucracy and the pervasive stigma against gay women.

In addition to Leah’s narrative, the novel contains nine other standalone character studies of other frequently ignored voices. These sections are each meant to be read in approximately four minutes, a nod to a social experiment that put forth the hypothesis that it only takes four minutes of looking someone in the eye and listening to them in order to accept and empathize with them.

A meticulously crafted social novel, Four Minutes takes a difficult, uncompromising look at modern life in Eastern Europe.

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Contemporary, LGBT, Bulgaria, Queer, Lesbian

136 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2017

About the author

Nataliya Deleva is a Bulgarian-born writer, living in London. Her debut novel, Four Minutes, was originally published in Bulgaria (Janet 45, 2017), where the book was awarded Best Debut Novel and was shortlisted for Novel of the Year (2018). It has since been translated into German (eta Verlag, 2018), English (Open Letter Books, 2021) and Polish (Wydawnictwo EZOP, 2021).

Her short fiction, essays, interviews and book reviews have appeared in literary journals and anthologies, such as Words Without Borders, Fence, Asymptote, Empty Mirror, Reading in Translation, Granta and the anthologies Stories from the 90s (ICU Publishing, 2019) and Love for advanced (Colibri, 2022).

Her second novel ARRIVAL, written originally in English, is published by The Indigo Press, UK (2022).

Reviews

[zuza_zaksiazkowane · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.3 O ludzie jakie ta książka zrobiła na mnie wrażenie. Przeczytajcie ją

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘It is an act of rebellion to remain present, to go against society’s desire for you to numb yourself, to look away,’ wrote musician Florence Welch in an essay for Vogue, ‘but we must not look away.’ Nataliya Deleva asks us to be present and bear the burdens of countless people around the world facing waking nightmares every day in her novel Four Minutes, a book short of page length but endless on heart and courage. Beautifully translated by Izidora Angel, this is a powerful work of sheer poetic beauty with prose that will tear you into pieces only to turn around and remake you stronger and wiser than before (luckily for English readers, another of Deleva’s novels, Arrival, will be published in 2022). The catch about having a job where I can read at work is that I often find myself wrestling with complex and difficult emotions while in a public-facing desk hoping nobody interrupts me until I reach a chapter break. This book was one that I wanted to shut the rest of the world out while I read. It frayed my nerves, tears welled up in my eyes, I felt the weight of the world and the pain of all the children in the orphanage in the novel. But, through it all, I felt the beautiful determination of the narrator to keep on going and to find ways to mend not only her hurts but hopefully assuage those of others. She reminds us that, at the end of the day, being cared about and caring for another is the spark in the darkness lighting the way to carry on under horrific burdens.

‘What did life in the Home teach me? The only thing that mattered. Survival.’

The bulk of Four Minutes is told in vignettes that swirl through the life of the narrator, from her times ‘buried alive in the hell of my misery’ in an orphanage called the Home to her life after as a play therapist in a similar orphanage hoping to ease the pains of children like herself. Interspersed through the primary narrative are nine character investigations of others, mostly also living in post-communist Bulgaria. These chapters are brief, intended presumably to be read in four minutes based on a theory by psychologist Arthur Aron that ‘looking into a stranger’s eyes for four minutes is the most powerful way to bring people closer.’ Deleva invites the reader to learn about Amnesty International Poland’s own experiment in 2016 during a refugee crisis to show, as Amnesty Director Draginja Nadażdin says ‘borders exist between countries, not people.’ The novel, in effect, becomes it’s own brilliant variation on the experiment, making the reader participants as we stare into these lives fraught with heartache and hardship and —we discover —can only walk away feeling deeply for them in our hearts.

‘In healing someone else’s wounds I was somehow healing my own.’

Despite the heavy blanket of sadness and suffering that weighs on every page of this book, ultimately the one word I’d choose to define Four Mintues is ‘empathy’. It flows forth from the narrator and takes a grip on our own hearts. Her own story is quite tragic, abandoned at birth by a mother she would never know and can only guess at the reasons for her own orphanhood. Abandonment, she fears, is her defining feature:

’Then she had left. Left me alone inside an incubator, where I took my first breaths, cutting the sterile hospital quiet with my immature lungs and painfully inhaling the abandonment that would come to define me.’

The vignettes describing life in the Home are intense, from children beating another to death for taking a lick of food not belonging to him or the narrator soiling herself every night to stave off the endless cycle of rapes after lights out, all ignored by the staff. Life after the Home is not easy either, living under food shortages and being a lesbian in a society not ready to accept her. Acceptance and easing suffering becomes an important aspect of her, and she and her lover avoid gay clubs ‘because we felt they were exclusionary. They labeled our love as somehow different and forbidden..that same-sex couples were abnormal and needed their own clubs.’

After a difficult childhood, she turns her life to caring for other children who have also been abandoned. As a child she watched the mothers come to the Home and ‘wondered if the mom’s came here to save one of us or to find salvation for themselves,’ and still as an adult working with children still wonder’s the same, but about herself observing ‘I wasn’t sure who really was helping whom patch up her childhood.’ What is most moving is the way she has looked darkness direct in the face and has decided to use her time to protect and heal others from it, particularly children in orphanages as she herself is denied the right to adopt due to being a lesbian and unmarried.

‘I plant dreams into their little minds, give them wings to fly over the horrors of their daily lives, so they can believe there’s something better out there on the other side of it all. A life that’s possible if they only have the strength to believe it. Believe in themselves, believe in the people around them, believe there is some sort of happy ending.’

In many of these 4-minute segments, we find the narrator wanting to help, or to hear their stories. With no childhood memories of family of her own, she has become a collector of memories from others. The book feels, in effect, like a scrapbook where she has taped all she finds from her life. The good and the bad. The things we must not look away from to remind us to always help and give empathy, even if you can’t change anything. Because there are some who prefer the numbness that Florence Welch warned against. Around me now, like a scene set in a coffee shop in this book, I hear parents argue that schools shouldn’t teach the uncomfortable parts of history or talk about the tragedies happening around us all. But, the book argues, looking away doesn’t help anyone and only allows harm to continue. ‘I think of the persecuted, the violated, the exiled, the orphaned,’ she writes, ‘the hundreds of thousands of children who aren’t in history class.’ This book is for those children, and we should all be standing up for those children.

This is a novel that will sit heavily in my soul like stones at the bottom of a pond and I am better for it. I think we all could be and I highly encourage reading this book. To extra entice you, this is pubished by Open Letter Books who are doing realy great things and committed to translation (and always puts the translators name on the title for those of you following Jennifer Croft writing great articles fighting for the respect of translators). The prose in this book harmonizes with your heart and is lovingly translated, and luckily for English readers Deleva has another book, Arrival, coming in 2022. Sad but necessary, short but powerful, Four Minutes is a perfectly intertwined gem of humanity. This is a book that reminds me why I enjoy reading.

5/5

‘Which is more impossible to live with: to be abandoned or to abandon and live with the guilt of it your entire life?’

[Magdalena Miękińska (getbooky) · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a moving work that follows a woman named Leah, an orphan, as she navigates adolescence and early adulthood. The story is told in fragments, jumping around in time and interspersed with stories of other characters. Each piece of this was well done, but the fragmented storytelling left the narrative flat and without the impact this should have had. This is a book I wanted to like more than I did.

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

• FOUR MINUTES by Nataliya Deleva, tr. from the Bulgarian by Isidora Angel, 2018/2021 from @openletterbooks

#ReadtheWorld21📍 Bulgaria
#WomenInTranslation

Hot off the press and just under the (official) #WITmonth August wire... My goodness, what a way to end this month's focus on Balkan literature and women in translation.

This book was outstanding.

The book is fragmented and non-linear in form, following the life of Leah, an orphan who grew up in an institution, and now as an adult seeks to adopt a child from this same institution, but is repeatedly denied based on her sexual orientation in conservative Bulgaria. Interspersed with Leah's story are short nonfiction essays, as well as 9 different standalone stories.

This book is about the marginalized and institutionalized "others" - orphans, queer, elderly, disabled, abuse victims, impoverished, sex workers, immigrants.

The title and a running theme in the book come from a social experiment conducted by Amnesty International Poland that it takes four minutes to look someone in the eyes to accept them. 

To see. To care. To empathize.

The 9 standalone stories theoretically take 4 minutes to read - so that YOU as a reader can see and empathize with the societal "others", as well as this more detailed story of Leah.

All of this in 135 pages.
Masterfully crafted and translated.

Could go on and on with my praise for this one, but I'll sum up by saying OUTSTANDING work by Deleva and Angel.

[spillingthematcha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sięgnęłam po tę książkę bardzo spontanicznie, a poruszyła mnie wielce swoim bólem i smutkiem. To historie pełne rozpaczy oraz niewidzialnych ludzi. Wzruszyły mnie swoją prostotą.

[Ewa (humanizmowo) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Smutna i wstrząsajaca, ale ma w sobie światełko dobroci i niewinności.

[Vartika · Rating 5 out of 5]

[This piece originally appeared in The Cardiff Review]

There are times when, walking down a busy street alone or unheard in the company of others, I feel myself receding; melting into the walls. In these periods, I am transported back to my childhood and the desperate pleas I made unto the world to turn me invisible. I wanted nothing more back then than to vanish, and to this day I incriminate the will housed in that soft, small body for the loneliness that I now inhabit; an invisibility whose form is less a cloak and more a shroud.

A few pages into Four Minutes, Nataliya Deleva’s narrator, Leah, admits to something similar: a sense of imperceptibility and unbelonging, and the feeling that she alone has willed her life into the trap of it. However, her tale informs readers that it couldn’t have been so. Abandoned as a baby, she grows up amidst the sordid iciness and terror of a children’s home in post-communist Bulgaria—Home with an H she calls it, impossible as it is for it to slip into the comfortable heteronymy of home, of a place where she can never arrive.

Leah’s traumatic childhood haunts her as she wanders along the margins of society, untethered and bereft of the basest securities most among us take for granted, trying and failing to integrate with a world that makes no overtures towards people like herself. As readers, we are made privy to her attempts to confront the past and how it stretches into a present littered with the ghost of an absent mother; the unexplained disappearance of her singular friend and lover; and the bureaucratic frustration of attempting to adopt a child as a gay, working-class woman. As a reader, I was compelled to hold a hand to her pain and her hunger for maternal nourishment, so beautifully communicated through all the references to food that she weaves through her narrative—the “long line of trucks and caravans stretching like caramel along the street;” the sticky memories like a thin, yellow crust settled on top of semolina pudding; the mothers with voices like peanut butter and freshly-squeezed orange juice. Mothers in this novel are often described as frail, always at danger of disappearing. And yet Leah wants to become one—and become one who gets to stay.

While the title of the original Bulgarian text, Невидими, refers to how fundamentally unseen the lives of people in Leah’s position are, Izidora Angel’s luminous English translation is named to emphasise the care, compassion, and humanising impulse which inform this bleak but unceasingly beautiful social novel. At the heart of Four Minutes is the psychologist Arthur Aron’s hypothesis that it only takes a few minutes of looking someone in the eye to understand and accept them. The narrator, in her acute awareness of the lack she lives through, spends a lot of time meditating on motherhood and the relationship between mothers and their children—a relationship she sees everywhere and aspires towards without romanticism. However, she also turns her gaze towards the stories of those; often also mothers and children; who are rendered invisible by society—the desolate, the excluded, the ones seeking refuge from horrors big and small. She cuts them out of newspaper articles, seeks them out in chance encounters, and gives them a place in her treasure chest of memories when nobody else would. The readers’ intimate journey along her mental landscape is interspersed with four-minute flashes into these and other overlooked lives, such as those of Syrian refugees and Roma women, whose contours we may otherwise be trained to gloss over. Looking them in the eye, we are faced with the brutality of the world and filled with a desire to push at its walls.

Thus, though it exposes one to an expanse of despondency, this book seems generative of silver linings: in my case, turning each page awakened a deeper hue of empathy—something I want to hold and make use of, something that overpowers the sense of loneliness I began with. What makes Four Minutes truly remarkable is the delicacy with which it approaches the margins, and brings them to the centre in a way that makes clear that the centre cannot, and should not want to, hold without them.

[Matthew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another stunningly innovative and affecting novel from Open Letter, this one an award-winning Bulgarian work originally published in 2017 and appearing now in English for the first time. It revolves around Leah, a 30-something woman who survived unimaginable childhood trauma growing up in a group home in post-communist Bulgaria. She is looking to adopt a similarly traumatized child from an orphanage as a way to give of herself and help someone in need, but is repeatedly rebuffed due to her low income and her sexual orientation.

Leah's story is told in short vignettes that hop back and forth in time, and they are interspersed with nine standalone character sketches featuring other suffering marginalized people in Eastern European society. These sketches could seem a bit gimmicky in the hands of a lesser author but Deleva (and translator Izidora Angel) expertly avoids any maudlin traps.

This is a deeply empathetic and inventive novel.

[Wojciech Szot · Rating 4 out of 5]

Smutna to książka i nie ma co ukrywać, że trzy godziny spędzone z “Niewidzialnymi” niekoniecznie będą należeć do najweselszych momentów waszego tygodnia. Ale warto się w tym zanurzyć.

“Nie wiem, czy kiedykolwiek zdołam opuścić swoje dzieciństwo”, mówi główna bohaterka i narratorka przełożonej przez Hannę Karpińską powieści. Dzieciństwo i młodość spędziła w domu dziecka czekając na wymarzoną mamę. Rodzicielska miłość jednak nie była jej przeznaczona. Na szczęście znalazła dziewczynę, z którą razem zamieszkały po wejściu w pełnoletność. Naja, bo tak ma na imię przyjaciółka z bidula, z którą połączy ją miłość, ucieknie.

Delewa w swojej debiutanckiej powieści przetyka historię dziewczyny z opowieściami o osobach niewidzialnych dla oczy “zwykłego” przechodnia - żebrzących dzieci, uchodźców, starych kobiet. Zastanawia się nad tym skąd bierze się czapka niewidka, którą niektórzy z nas zakładają, by przetrwać, by nie wyróżniać się z tłumu, nie oberwać. Analizuje zarówno samą ideę “niewidoczności”, zwracając uwagę na takie zjawiska jak “niewidzialna sztuka”, czyli wystawiane w galeriach sztuki obrazy i artefakty, które… nie istnieją. Filmy nakręcone bez taśmy, obrazy malowane przy użyciu atramentu sympatycznego - niewidzialność fascynuje, daje możliwość utkania własnej opowieści, stworzenia się na nowo. “Chciałam być niewidzialna w świecie, w którym ludzie czerpią radość z obnażania cudzych historii, przekształcania ich w sensację, wpychania się do życia innych, podglądania”.

Powieść składa się z kilkudziesięciu scen, z których niektóre może nie są do końca udane, zbyt oczywiste w metaforze, dosłowne i nie dające czytelnikowi zbyt wiele możliwości na uruchomienie wyobraźni, ale jednak zapadających w pamięć. Jak historia marzenia dorosłej już kobiety o pójściu do cyrku. Dorosłe dzieci po bidulu chcą nadrobić doświadczenia przynależne do czasu dzieciństwa. Pragnienie niemożliwe do urzeczywistnienia zostało w “Niewidzialnych” opowiedziane z empatią i zrozumieniem, “Świat już przestał być magiczny”, pisał Borges, o czym przypomina Delewa w rozbudowanej sekcji mott.

W “Niewidzialnych” znajdziecie też świetnie napisaną i poprowadzoną scenę seksu z udziałem osoby z inną motoryką ruchową. W tym jak Delewa podchodzi do opisywania swoich bohaterów ujawnia się jej olbrzymia wrażliwość, ale też literackie poszukiwania, z których książka została utkana. Dialogi dziejące się w wyobraźni bohaterki, sceny “z miasta”, opowieści o miłości, rozważania filozoficzne czy kulturoznawcze układają się w niezwykle smutną, ale długo zostającą pod powiekami książkę.

“Niewidzialni” to niezwykle udany debiut, książka opowiadająca o dzieciństwie łącząc nostalgię, bezpośredniość z empatią. Jest smutno, jest przykro, ale jest też literacko ciekawie, intrygująco i choć czasem to wszystko jest zbyt oczywiste, nadmiernie dopowiedziane i jednak proste, to może właśnie w tym tkwi siła tej książki.

[Carmel Hanes · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Four minutes is all it takes to accept a stranger. 'Look Beyond Borders' is a 2016 project by Amnesty international Poland. It's based on psychologist Arthur Aron's theory that looking into a stranger's eyes for four minutes is the most powerful way to bring people closer."

"The campaign was launched as a response to the attitudes in several European cities regarding refugee families. according to the organizers, when you stand face to face with someone and look into her eyes, you can no longer see a refugee with no identity, you see a person just like you--someone who loves and suffers and dreams."

"We don't occupy the space; we exist in its cracks. It is the absence of us, our abandonment that fills it in. At night, we lie awake invisible to the living, we stalk the mothers who left us behind, we haunt their dreams."

Four Minutes. About the lost. About the abandoned. About those existing, invisible, in the cracks of our world. Whether they be orphaned children, those unsheltered, those deemed unacceptable by the larger culture, or those who simply hide behind walls of shame, fear, or depression.

This story creates a four minute look into their eyes.

The nontraditional format of this novel will put some off. It's not a "story" per se so much as a roving spotlight into the lives of the marginalized. The ones we walk past, looking the other way, as though that eye contact might transmit their misfortune. The ones we believe are well cared for by institutions so we don't have to be bothered. The ones we mutter could do better if they made different choices, so we can circle our privileged lives without guilt. The ones who "should have stayed where they belong". The ones trying to grow fresh skin around the scars life tattooed on them.

It's a fast read, but a starkly brutal one at times, because it's a reality relentlessly repeated in our world. In this four minute look into those eyes, I did, indeed, find love, dreams and suffering.

[Brendan Monroe · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is painful, endlessly bleak stuff, so much so that turning the pages felt at times like engaging in a bit of literary masochism. At 139 pages, it is mercifully short, even if it often doesn't feel that way when you're reading.

Now, I know what you're thinking — some recommendation, right? That's just the thing — this is actually really good, and very nicely written (and, credit where credit's due, wonderfully translated by Izidora Angel). As a result, while you don't want to be immersed in this deeply disturbing world of child abuse and criminal neglect (of every imaginable variety, parental and governmental most particularly), you're helpless to resist the pull of the writing.

You don't have to have spent time in one to know that orphanages in formerly communist Eastern Europe are, by and large, dreadful places, something that seems to have only worsened since the fall of the USSR. Reading "Four Minutes" heightens that awareness by placing you directly in a Bulgarian orphanage.

Yippee.

Based on this, there sound like few worse places to be — especially for a child.

Much of the book revolves around the attempt of our protagonist, Leah, a gay woman who grew up an orphan herself, to adopt ("save" might be a better word) a young girl. Because of her sexuality, she's repeatedly denied.

This plotline is very reminiscent of Elton John's attempt to adopt an HIV-positive Ukrainian boy, Lev, from a Ukrainian orphanage back in 2009. Like our protagonist here, Elton John and his partner were denied their request to adopt the boy by Ukrainian officials, something so disgustingly ludicrous it appropriately earned the ire of much of the civilized world.

This book is divided into dozens of sections, each of which is designed to be read in four minutes. This is, according to my paperback edition, "a nod to a social experiment that put forth the hypothesis that it only takes four minutes of looking someone in the eye and listening to them in order to accept and empathize with them."

Mission accomplished. But part of me wishes I was capable of a little less empathy, as most of these sections make for a very difficult four minutes.

This is the most recent selection of my subscription with Open Letter Books. I am extremely grateful for their work, and encourage you to check it out, as this independent publisher does a great job of selecting fascinating translated literature from around the world.

My first experience with Bulgarian fiction was also an Open Letter selection. That book, The Physics of Sorrow by Georgi Gospodinov, remains one of my favorite novels. Gospodinov apparently served as a mentor to the author of "Four Minutes," Nataliya Deleva, which tells you something about this book's quality.

Highly recommended. Just don't read it if you're already in a bad place. Or, actually, do ... maybe it'll put things in perspective for you.

[Galya Ozan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Актуална и болезнена тема, на която се обръща внимание само по Коледа и при нещастен инцидент.Невъжможно е човек да остане безпристрастен на такива истории.Това е реалноста за доста деца и хора, които остават за нас невидими, но те съществуват и се опитват да станат видими, да се борят, да мечтаят, но винаги има нещо или някой, който да им попречи.
- Какво е "вкъщи"?
- Вкъщи е ... Там, където всички те обичат.

[hopeforbooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Niewidzialni" Natalii Delewej to historia młodej kobiety wychowanej w domu dziecka. Jej trudne dzieciństwo przeplatane jest krótkimi migawkami z życia innych ludzi z marginesu społeczeństwa.

To była bardzo szybka lektura, która pochłonęłam na raz. A do tego bardzo przejmująca, poruszająca problem nierówności społecznej, wykluczenia i samotności. Historia o osobach niewidzialnych. Bardzo smutna.

I choć niektóre historie wydawały mi się zbyt uproszczone, to mimo to uważam, że warto się z nią zapoznać.

[Pamela · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Joanna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nie muszę tu dużo mówić jeśli napisze że ta książka sprawiła, ��e zachciało mi się mieć (w dalekiej przyszłości) kogoś komu mogłabym oddać swoją najlepszą część i dzielić się wszystkim co wspaniałe..

[Natalia Sypuła · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Samuel Gordon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another one of these small novels written with piercing clarity that pack a big punch. Reminded me of Hurricane Season in places with its unflinching brutality.

[Dilyana Deneva · Rating 4 out of 5]

От „Невидими“ в статистиката до личности с история: http://azcheta.com/nevidimi-nataliya-...

Обичам да чета книги, чиито автори се осмеляват да разнищват темите, които инстинктивно избягваме в ежедневието си. Особено ако не ни засягат пряко. Но те винаги ни засягат – осъзнато или не, по наше желание или не съвсем. Защото дори да звучи трудно за осмисляне, между всички човешки същества има свързваща нишка, а между членовете на едно общество тя е още по-силна.

Никак не е случайно, че дебютният роман „Невидими“ (изд. „Жанет 45“) на младата българска писателка Наталия Делева стана толкова очебийно присъствие в разговорите за важни книги. Радвам се, че тази година спечели наградата на Литературен клуб „Перото“ в категория „Дебют“ – напълно заслужено и сред достойна конкуренция. Мисля си обаче, че истинското „възнаграждение“ за авторката би било повече хора да я прочетат осъзнато. Това би означавало да се замислим, че навън има хора, за чието съществуване не подозираме и от което не се интересуваме.

Чували сме, че ги има, защото четем статистики за тях, споменават се и в новините, но до голяма степен сме развили резистентност към историите им. Тази реакция е донякъде обяснима – в настоящата информационна ера трябва да наложим някакви ограничения на съдържанието, което допускаме до съзнанието си, иначе ще потънем в кал. Проблемът идва, когато загубим чувствителността си и вече нищо извън нашия живот не е в състояние да ни докосне. От тази повсеместна липса на емпатия ме е страх понякога и заради нея считам „Невидими“ за изключително ценен роман.

Наталия Делева е написала безкрайно тежка книга. Не е възможно да я прочетеш и да останеш безразличен, а е много вероятно да усещаш и почти физическа болка, докато разлистваш страниците. Главната героиня е момиче, отраснало в Дом за изоставени деца, но освен етикета „изоставена“ към името ѝ с годините могат да се залепят още няколко. Все на маргинализирани групи, които ще добавят болка, трудности и отхвърляне към битието ѝ.

Тя е една от невидимите в книгата. Научила се е да съществува тихо, да получава това, което според другите ѝ се полага, да не иска повече – защото никой не я е научил да го прави. Дори името ѝ научаваме едва към края. За какво му е на читателя да го знае? То дава идентичност, позволява да се заявиш, да кажеш „Аз съм“, „Аз искам“, а през цялото си детство Леа няма представа какво значат тези думи. Как изведнъж да придобиеш позиция при тези обстоятелства? Убийствено безпомощна се чувствах, докато четях за зверствата (физически и психически), които се е наложило да изтърпи през годините, в които е трябвало да бъде обградена от обич и топлина.

"Коя бях аз? Никой досега не бе назовавал името ми достатъчно често, за да ме накара да се почувствам значима. До този момент моята история беше историята на всяко друго дете от Дома. От всеки Дом за изоставени деца."

Леа говори от първо лице и така хем засилва внушението на разказа, хем според мен излиза извън границите на реалното. Защото Наталия Делева умее да пише топло, да влиза в дълбочината на смисъла, без да прибягва до сложни думи. Но можем ли да го очакваме от някого, който никога не е бил научен на това? Иска ми се да вярвам, че е възможно, но не знам…

Фактът, който обаче напълно отговаря на реалния живот, е, че Леа изпитва огромно желание, по-скоро нужда, да осинови дете. Ние винаги живеем с познатото от преди – там се чувстваме сигурни, знаем какво да очакваме. Търсим спасение за себе си, спасявайки другите, в които се припознаваме. Понякога този избор ни носи бленуваното освобождение, друг път ни помага да осъзнаем, че всъщност отговорите на всички въпроси са вътре в нас. Но е хубаво по пътя към себе си да си позволим да подадем ръка, а също и да поемем протегната към нас ръка. Защото нерядко оставаме невидими по собствен избор.

Съсредоточих се върху Леа, но в книгата ще откриете още много герои. Те се появяват за кратко и имената им са споменати, ала все попадат в някоя от групите, за които не е удобно да се говори. Момче на количка, което изживява своята любовна история, майка, изгубила дъщеря си и неизлекувала раните си, която травмира другото си дете, джебчия, бежанец… Авторката не спестява нищо на читателя. За съжаление, стряскащата на места бруталност не е плод на богатото ѝ въображение, а реалност за прототипите на персонажите ѝ, които живеят сред нас. Всеки е дошъл отнякъде, докато стигне до момента, в който му се залепва етикет, и не можем да съдим с лека ръка само настоящия кадър от лентата на живота му.

Не е по силите ни, нито е нужно да спасяваме света от всички несправедливости, с които е залят. Можем и трябва обаче да бъдем готови да разберем какво стои зад не толкова лъскавата опаковка. Просто да се замислим, да не извръщаме глава, да приемем различните. Може би причината да не го правим често е страхът. Страх, че и ние можем да бъдем отхвърлени, ако заемем различна от стандартната позиция. Запитайте се обаче – струва ли си рискът, ако залогът е да дарите надежда, да спасите живот или дори само да предизвикате усмивка, която рядко озарява нечие лице?

[Amellie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Дебютният роман на Наталия Делева "Невидими" (ИК "Жанет 45", 2017) е само 157 страници. Те обаче синтезират в себе си многотомници от истории, които остават или недоизказани, или недочути, а най-често просто пренебрегвани. Историите на онези деца (и бивши деца), които обществото счита за невидими, и за които повечето хора си спомнят по време на коледни благотворителни инициативи, но иначе подминават с безразличие или погнуса. Те обаче са си там - съществуват, надяват се, мечтаят, съчиняват живота си и подобно на малката кибритопродавачка си доставят мигове на илюзорно щастие с цената на последните си издихания в студения и враждебен към тях свят.
http://amelllie.blogspot.bg/2017/08/b...

[julia.lukasiewicz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ta lektura to było przeżycie.. Niewiele ponad miesiąc temu odeszła moja mama. Zostawiła pustkę i milion emocji, których nie jestem w stanie opisać. Ta książka dla wielu będzie uosobieniem bólu oraz braku miłości, ale dla mnie pozostanie źródłem otuchy i ukojenia. Chciałabym móc podziękować autorce za to co opisała na kartach powieści, za sposób w jaki ujęła bezsens i walkę po utracie najbliższych. Ta książka zostanie ze mną na zawsze.

[zuzanna · Rating 3 out of 5]

Czy nasza miłość była inna? Tak. Była tak samo inna, niepowtarzalna i jedyna, jak każda miłość na świecie.

[Zksiazkazapanbrat · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow... Jestem pod wrażeniem. Szczerze nie wiem za bardzo co mogę napisać o tej książce, bo trochę mnie zmiotło z plaszy. Jest ona przepięknie napisana i traktuje o trudnych tematach.

[Mateusz Dyszkiewicz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cudowna jest ilość świetnych cytatów powala w tej książce

[moony · Rating 5 out of 5]

????!-):82?>(.7!jahwksjsja$!{+[!.¥_??!!!!!

ale to było przeżycie, kłaniam się przed autorką

[wercia · Rating 4 out of 5]

chyba najsmutniejsza ksiazka przeczytana przeze mnie w tym roku

[Peyton · Rating 5 out of 5]

The dampness has soaked through the floorboards and settled underneath next to our collective horror. My fear drifts low like fog - microscopic drops of it coalesce to form this fathomless feeling inside me.

Four Minutes is the story of Leah, a woman who grew up in an orphanage in Bulgaria at the end of the twentieth century. Leah has always longed to have a family and to protect children from the same traumas she experienced, so she seeks to adopt a young girl named Dara. The adoption agency is hesitant, however, because Leah is a single lesbian and lower-income.

Deleva’s debut novel is breathtaking both in concept and execution. This is a heartfelt story about empathy and longing. The title and the illustration on the cover are both references to psychologist Arthur Aron’s theory that looking into someone’s eyes for four minutes is all it takes to develop an emotional connection with that person. I highly recommend this book to anybody who feels up to reading an emotionally intense, experimental novella.

[prozaczytana · Rating 4 out of 5]

Książkę wręcz pochłonęłam, a każda historia poruszyła mnie do głębi. Od razu po jej zakończeniu byłam wzruszona oraz zachwycona, bo uwielbiam sięgać po mniej popularne tytuły, które nieraz swoją prostotą i cudownością wzbijają się na wyżyny, moszcząc się wysoko pomiędzy moimi ulubieńcami. Natomiast mam wrażenie, że w tym przypadku chyba trochę zachłysnęłam się tymi wrażeniami, które były bardzo mocne i prawdziwe, ale prędko opadły, bo ku mojemu ubolewaniu po kilku dniach nie pamiętałam, o czym była ta książka. Myślę, iż przez to jeszcze do niej wrócę za jakiś czas, choćby po to, aby zachwycić się przynajmniej przez chwilę.

Bywamy niewidzialni z różnych powodów... Czasami z przyjemnością stajemy się przezroczyści, robiąc wszystko byle ktoś nas nie zauważył, byle się ukryć, byle nikt nas nie zaczepił. Nieraz jednak marzymy o kontakcie z drugą osobą, lgnąc do niej ze wszystkich sił, a cały świat zdaje się o nas zapominać, odwracając wzrok i udając, że nie istniejemy... Niewidzialność ma rozmaite oblicza. Niewidzialni żyją wśród nas. Może to Ty jesteś niewidzialny/-a? Może to Ty kogoś nie widzisz?

[И~N · Rating 4 out of 5]

Хубав дебют!
Историите, разказани в романа (или сборника с преплетени разкази) са колкото фини и деликатни, толкова и свирепи и остри.
Въпреки че заглавието може да доведе до асоциации за мълчаливи остъствия, в страниницте на романа отсъствието никак не е нямо - то говори и разсъждава, моделира светове, но и крещи.
Наталия Делева посяга към наболели обществени въпроси като осиновяването, съдбата на децата от домовете - във и вън от тях, отхвърлянето и приемането в широк план (било на малцинствени или на други социални групи).
Стилът е четивен, като на моменти ми идваше прекалено емоционален в онази нотка на претруфеност и показност, която сякаш се чуждееше на цялостната атмосфера на романа.
Оформлението на книгата е прекрасно и я превръща в преживяване, играещо със сетивата като цяло.

Завършвам с любим цитат:
"Желанието ми да я осиновя растеше в мен като злокачествен тумор - терминално, асиметрично, безконтролно."

Красив дебют!

[ewa · Rating 5 out of 5]

first read - april 2022 - 5/5
reread - february 2023 - 5/5

druzgocąca i przeraźliwie smutna