...a dark, dreamlike debut novel steeped in Balkan history and legend ... Stork Mountain is a beautiful and haunting novel, one that delves into a painful past and begs the questions: To what extent are we doomed to relive the past and carry it with us? At what point must we relent and set it free?
An intelligently mapped plot complements the skilful blend of familial relationships with religious commentary, and elements of the hamlets’ folklore and rituals lend an added mystery; the story brims but doesn’t feel crowded. This is a historically rich study of borders: those imposed by cartography and those that are self-constructed.
...a sprawling, wildly ambitious novel into which Penkov crams centuries of history and folklore ... By the end, the author’s ambitions have outrun his ability to harness them, but if Stork Mountain is sometimes incoherent, it is seldom dull and always intriguing ... Soaring into the fantastic while claiming an anchor in gritty reality is a tricky artistic strategy, and Penkov doesn’t quite pull it off ... Stork Mountain is by no means perfect, but it’s thoughtful and thought-provoking, with a passionate faith in the redemptive powers of art.
Like his two main characters, Penkov is a little 'drunk on ghosts and days long gone.' Their stories —'pages and pages, chains of words. Stories of exile and of death. Bulgarians, Greeks, Armenians and Turks' — crowd a narrative already teeming with feints and dodges as a family’s secrets are slowly teased out and exposed.
Stork Mountain recounts some of the bloodiest episodes in the history of a region that is home to forced conversions, witch hunts, mass migrations and massacres. The book marks its expatriate author’s return to his native land, by reinventing it through multiple, overlapping stories, and by reminding us that all the stories and histories we collectively recount are fabrications. A reader is likely to be as overwhelmed as the narrator — who, unable to cope, takes to bed for days — by all the disparate myths and truths that compete for our attention.
