©2024 Fable Group Inc.
4.5 

The Little Communist Who Never Smiled

By Lola Lafon & Nick Caistor
The Little Communist Who Never Smiled by Lola Lafon & Nick Caistor digital book - Fable

Publisher Description

An award-winning novel powerfully re-imagines a childhood in the spotlight of history, politics, and destiny. Montreal 1976. A fourteen-year-old girl steps out onto the floor of the Montreal Forum and into history. Twenty seconds on uneven bars is all it takes for Nadia Comaneci, the slight, unsmiling child from Communist Romania, to etch herself into the collective memory. The electronic scoreboard, astonishing spectators with what has happened, shows 1.0. The judges have awarded an unprecedented perfect ten, the first in Olympic gymnastics, though the scoreboard is unable to register anything higher than 9.9. In The Little Communist Who Never Smiled, Lola Lafon tells the story of Comaneci's journey from growing up in rural Romania to her eventual defection to the United States in 1989. Adored by young girls in the west and appropriated as a political emblem by the Ceausescu regime, Comaneci's life was scrutinized wherever she went. Lafon's fictionalized account shows how a single athletic event mesmerizes the world and reverberates across nations.

Download the free Fable app

app book lists

Stay organized

Keep track of what you’re reading, what you’ve finished, and what’s next.
app book recommendations

Build a better TBR

Swipe, skip, and save with our smart list-building tool
app book reviews

Rate and review

Share your take with other readers with half stars, emojis, and tags
app comments

Curate your feed

Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communities
app book lists

Stay organized

Keep track of what you’re reading, what you’ve finished, and what’s next.
app book recommendations

Build a better TBR

Swipe, skip, and save with our smart list-building tool
app book reviews

Rate and review

Share your take with other readers with half stars, emojis, and tags
app comments

Curate your feed

Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communities

4 Reviews

4.5
“Incredible. I'm pretty sure if I had read the original French it would have been even better, the translation might have been a bit off at times. I had a hard time putting this down. Beautifully laid out.”
“The Little Communist Who Never Smiled is a fascinating re-imagining of the life of Nadia Comaneci as told through the narrator and her imagined dialogue with Nadia herself while writing her biography. While the set-up is rather odd (and might leave you reaching for your phone to sort out how much of what is written is accurate), ultimately it works. The biographical details are interesting and I did spend a fair bit of time googling to see video of the routines or biographies of individuals referred to in the book. However, the bigger payoff comes in the deeper examination of the use of the female gymnasts and their bodies as a battleground in the propaganda war within Romania, between east and west, and between the western bloc countries themselves, and the imagined effect this had on the girls themselves. For a fairly slim novel, this book covers a lot of territory. Highly recommended.”

Start a Book Club

Start a public or private book club with this book on the Fable app today!

FAQ

Do I have to buy the ebook to participate in a book club?

Why can’t I buy the ebook on the app?

How is Fable’s reader different from Kindle?

Do you sell physical books too?

Are book clubs free to join on Fable?

How do I start a book club with this book on Fable?

Error Icon
Save to a list
0
/
30
0
/
100
Private List
Private lists are not visible to other Fable users on your public profile.
Notification Icon
Fable uses the TMDB API but is not endorsed or certified by TMDB