"Someone once said that what makes a literary work is what we might call "excellent use of language".
Because even in the darkest situations, love offers a glimmer of hope for us all..
This is a book about nationalism and politics, about human nature, about little-known cultures and, most of all, about women and their defiant love for parents, children, husbands and lovers, set against a background of disaster and tragedy.
There\'s a lot more too.
From the first page it is a compelling read: a multi-stranded road movie of a book interweaving first-hand accounts of the explosion itself and its horrific consequences; the journey of a woman from far-away Catalonia to discover the truth of the disaster as she helps children affected by its consequences; and the odyssey of one of those Chernobyl children who goes on the run with her young daughter to escape an unpleasant fate in her own country.
Three decades on, Rosa Maria Pascual \'s splendid novel tells the stories that weren\'t heard at the time: what happened - and is still happening - to the people living around the nuclear power station in what was then the Soviet Union and is now Ukraine.
Soon, though, a radioactive cloud began spreading across Europe and, perhaps for the first time, we were all forced to realise what a small, fragile world we live in.
At first it seemed like another of the many terrible things that happen in far-off countries and make only brief headlines in our media before quickly disappearing from the front pages.
I was a young journalist in the UK when the nuclear accident at Chernobyl happened.
All this makes Rosa Maria Pascual \'s novel an excellent, must-read book for remembering what it means to contaminate land for centuries - something that should never, ever happen again.
The Chernobyl disaster should certainly not be forgotten considering that the price we normally pay when we lose our collective memory is repeating the same mistakes.
Iryna\'s story is inspiring but also reminds us of just how far human beings can go wrong when we fail to calibrate certain technological applications correctly.
Flashing backwards and forwards in time without ever losing clarity, the novel places us at different periods in Iryna\'s exciting life as, despite the serious difficulties she often faces, she manages to maintain her enthusiasm and desire to get on.
The story focuses on the character of Iryna, the people around her, and the experiences she and her brother Vasyl have in Catalonia with a host family when they are children.
Combining great narrative style and extreme delicacy, the author shows us the grim reality for the people of Ukraine of the tragedy that happened at Chernobyl on 26 April 1986 during and after the accident at the nuclear power station.
Well, the novel "Where are you going, Iryna?" is undoubtedly a perfect example of this, packed with rare quality and sensitivity. "Someone once said that what makes a literary work is what we might call "excellent use of language"
