Freud's Sister (Goce Smilevski)

This book will be published on August 28th.  Translated from Macedonian.

Adolfina Freud was one of many children, and was a sickly child.  Her only comfort as a child were the special times she would spend with her older brother Sigmund.  He helped rid her of the torture of her mother's cruel words of regretting her birth because of her strangeness, her sickliness. As time went on and the family's golden Siggie began to grow apart from them all, and Adolfina finds her own introspective view point constantly at odds with the rest of the world, still she finds that her world somehow revolves around her brother, or his maybe around hers.  Adolfina has friends, a lover, dreams and conversation but is always unfulfilled, empty, longing.  Her mother continues to tell her that she is an oddity, an unhappy spinster.  But Adolfina is full of her observations, thoughts, philosophy.  And when it become too much, she retreats to the Nest, a madhouse.  Years of thoughts, observations, strange contentment, slip by, almost without notice, until she finds that her friends are old, her brother and his works are not immortal afterall, and life is everchanging, yet remaining the same.  The Nazis come when Adolfina and her sisters are elderly, frail and unable to defend themselves.  Golden Siggie has the documents to take himself and his family to London and safety, but he chooses to leave his sisters' names off the list, though he did include his dog.
This was an extremely poetic book. It includes a lot of philosophical conversations between characters, and of course, a lot of psychology.
 Although the entire book was thought-provoking and eloquent, the final chapter, the final pages put this book into the 5 star category. Wonderful read.