The Romanian: Story of an Obsession

• Paperback - 02 February, 2006 - Tarcher
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• By: Bruce Benderson
• ISBN: 1585424781

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Reviews by readers

Beautiful

While I may like this book partly because I know its main locale, anyone who has ever loved a person or a place with pain, obsessed, fantasized, felt exiled, or contemplated history and fate, will find this a fascinating read.

A smart director would snatch up the rights

I am straight and was wonderfully surprised how "The Romanian" depicted facets of my own love life and how Benderson's relationship with his mother was similar --the same suffocating control and tenderness. Benderson jolts us right out of our outdated heterosexual and homosexual bourgeois notions. Whether it is his mother or a shameful street hustler, Benderson is only too aware that we are all flawed; that we are only all too human. A shocker for sure but almost right from the beginning, we stop judging and start to search, along with Benderson, deep into our own souls.

"The Romanians," multi- layered intertwines the past with and present in such a brilliant way that we not only learn something about ourselves but also about several cultures. A smart director like Paul VERHOEVEN or TARANTINO would be smart to snatch up the rights.

The politics of an Obsession

I loved this book. It was honest, although at times it did teeter on the pretentious. I'm not sure if there really was a valid point to his parallel tale of Romania's last king and mistress and Benderson's affair with the his Romanian hustler. Perhaps Benderson was just trying to displace some of his guilty feelings over exploiting a poor and desperate young man. By the end it really doesn't matter - his rose tinted glasses are off and it's all just grime, grit as dirty as uncut diamonds. I came to realize that everyone is an accomplice in their own undoing.

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