Review: The Fox Was Ever the Hunter by Herta Müller

Title: The Fox Was Ever the Hunter
Author: Herta Müller
Format: Hardcover
Publisher: Metropolitan Books
Publish Date: May 10, 2016
Source: PR

What's the Story?:

From Goodreads.com: "Romania—the last months of the Ceausescu regime. Adina is a young schoolteacher. Paul is a musician. Clara works in a wire factory. Pavel is Clara’s lover. But one of them works for the secret police and is reporting on all of the group.

One day Adina returns home to discover that her fox fur rug has had its tail cut off. On another occasion it’s the hindleg. Then a foreleg. The mutilated fur is a sign that she is being tracked by the secret police—the fox was ever the hunter.

Images of photographic precision combine into a kaleidoscope of terror as Adina and her friends struggle to keep mind and body intact in a world pervaded by complicity and permeated with fear, where it’s hard to tell victim from perpetrator."

My Two Cents:

"The Fox Was Ever the Hunter" follows several characters but mostly the main character is Adina, a woman who believes that the Romanian secret police are following her at the end of the totalitarian regime of Ceausescu. I was fascinated by this look at a history that I was not all that familiar with.

What kept me reading this book is the writing. The writing is absolutely gorgeous and engaging. It does make you feel like there is a little bit of space between you and the characters and I never really felt like I got to know the characters very well and I wish I would have gotten to know them a little bit better throughout the book. There were several parts of the narrative that I read a few times simply because they were so well written.

The story itself left me wanting. Again, I think much of that had to do with feeling like I did not know the characters very well. It was hard for me to feel like I was very engaged with them. I wish there had also been a little bit more about the political situation of Romania at the time. You certainly get a taste of it but I wanted more.

Overall, the writing kept me reading and I will be on the lookout for some of Muller's other books! This story was a good taste!