Under a Red Sky, by Haya Leah Molnar (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), is the memoir of a young girl growing up in 1950s Communist Romania.

The author, then Eva Zimmerman, is an only daughter who lives with seven opinionated adults, her extended family, in a small house they share with a Russian couple below them, and another couple with a child Eva’s age, Andrei, in the attic above them.

It’s a crowded home, full of noise and conflict. Eva shares a bedroom with her parents. One of her uncles sleeps in the kitchen.

Her father works at a government-run film studio and is hardly ever home. Her mother, we are told, was once a top ballerina who turned down the opportunity to dance at the Bolshoi.

Eva is Jewish, something she doesn’t become aware of until she is eight, and the reader is only told gradually. At first, the author throws out hints –  we are told early on that she is named Eva after the first woman in the Bible, and also to carry on the letter “E,” after her grandfather, Emile, who died in Auschwitz. We hear her repeat words her grandparents toss around such as “mitzvah.” Her grandmother, upon hearing that her son got engaged to a Romanian woman, says, “It had to be a shikse for my only son.”

Her grandfather gives her a mezuzah one day, and she has no idea what to do with it.

But the Jewish aspect is pretty much below the surface in the first half of the book.

The story unfolds at first as a series of short chapters describing various unrelated episodes of her childhood – her first day at school, her home, her village, etc. It is told with the language and diction of a young girl, although I wouldn’t say this is a book for young children.

There is no real narrative arc at first, just a series of unrelated descriptive vignettes.

Molnar’s description of growing up in a Communist country is at the core of this book. The opening chapter, a visit to the local market with her grandfather, evokes images of old European outdoor markets with all its noise, smells and livestock.

The author vividly describes the hardships of growing up in a Communist country. You realize what a different world she grew up in from what children today are used to. One day a foreign friend of her father’s gives her a toiletry kit filled with various items such as soap, hand lotion and a toothbrush– unheard of luxuries in commodity-deprived eastern Europe. Eva is ecstatic. “This is the best present I ever received,” she says. She brushes her teeth twice to taste the Belgian toothpaste in her mouth.  

She mentions once about never having eaten a banana or an orange.

On her first day at school, at seven years old, the first assignment handed out by the overly patriotic teacher is to write what the Communist party means to her and what it’s like to be a true Romanian.

When she is sick, her grandfather has to go to the market to look for lemons (for vitamin C). The doctor tells her parents she requires antibiotics and inquires if they know anybody with connections abroad, since that’s the only way to get them.

Molnar describes a world of spies and moles living in the neighbourhood, and how her parents would speak in whispers for fear of being overheard by the dreaded secret police, the Securitate.

And then one day she hears her parents speaking in whispers about applying for passports. She asks her aunt where they’re going. “To Israel,” her aunt replies. “Where all the Jews belong.”

“Jews?” Eva wonders. “We are Jews.”

Eva is astounded by this bit of news, that she is what her friend Andrei refers to as a “kike.” Would horns grow on her scalp?

She wants to know more about Judaism, and despite her grandmother’s protests, that being Jewish is dangerous, her grandfather takes her to weekly meetings with a local rabbi who is in the process of training boys for their bar mitzvah. Although being Jewish isn’t strictly illegal, they want to keep her visits quiet. It’s not worth it to bring more attention to themselves.

The rabbi keeps a Torah scroll hidden in a secret room behind his library. Eva loves hearing Hebrew spoken and learning the Hebrew alphabet. “Every time he opens his mouth to form a word, I imagine a beautiful Hebrew letter flying off the Torah scroll and up toward the ceiling, until all the letters are gathered in a crown of dancing words above us,” she writes.

After they apply for passports and visas, their lives change drastically. Her father loses his job, and Eva is told not to tell other kids in school that she is Jewish. Her mother is followed by the Securitate and harassed after being observed entering  the Israeli consulate.

Although the narrative is at times disjointed, probably because of the intentional childlike point of view, Molnar’s memoir gives the reader an interesting view of life behind the Iron Curtain. Although it might be listed as a children’s book, it’s probably more appropriate for late teens and young adults, although us “older” adults will also find Molnar’s vivid descriptive story interesting.