Nostalgia comprises three short(ish) stories, and two novellas, each told by a different first-person narrator. A censored Hungarian version (entitled Visul, ‘The Dream’) appeared in 1989 and an uncensored one in 1995. An English version was not available until Julian Semilian’s 2005 translation. A shallow internet search brought up two reviews, both of which seemed to miss essential points of the work. Kirkus compared Cărtărescu’s “phantasmagorical world” to Dalí’s images, but this loses the deep-seated uncanniness of Cărtărescu’s writing, its existential uneasiness within the familiar; de Chirico would be a better choice, or Carrington. A Spectator review bizarrely compared Cărtărescu to C.S. Lewis, saying Nostalgia summoned “the wonder and terror of a Danubian Narnia”. Tell me you never read fantasy without telling me you never read fantasy.

The stories are impressive, even dazzling, but marred by pervasive essentialist sexism. The female characters are thinly sketched in flat, minor roles, and even in 'The Twins', where one of the main characters is (mainly) a woman, her whole life is dominated by her romantic relationships. The male narrator of 'The Twins' doesn’t flinch from open misogyny when he recalls the childhood experience of being naked with his friend Marcela: “[t]he incipience of contempt insinuated itself in me, while in her, it was the beginning of humility and veneration”. There is also a tendency to use animals as sacrificial victims—itself not an unusual ‘feminine’ role—whose trauma or death either reveals something about the hero, or teaches him An Important Lesson. Such reliance on convenient stereotypes of any ‘other’ acting as a foil to or a mirror of the main character makes for tedious reading.

This problematic aspect is outweighed by the quality of what remains. Cărtărescu is an outstanding writer, and his imagination, both wild and elegant, is at its most confident and impressive in the second half of 'The Twins' and especially in 'The Architect', in which the effect of that most banal of sounds, the car-horn, on the central character has, ultimately, cosmic repercussions. The first and least inter-connected story, 'The Roulette Player', has a very distinct charm, gritty, violent, and fantastical, like a Dostoyevskian Bulgakov.

Nostalgia is described by its author as a novel, because the stories are connected ‘subterraneously’. It is not a novel in the sense of a continuous narrative, but the locations feel sustained, like the relationship between the characters and their material environment. All the stories take place in Bucharest, but in its unorthodox, unofficial places – alleys between home and school, the secret locations of an illicit sport, the backrooms of a museum. The environment is uncanny; there is a sense that the demi-monde locations are sorcerous in their effects on the characters. Although recollections of youth form much of the narrative, the original Hungarian title is more apt, resonating as it does with intensity of experience, suspension of logic, and dismissal of explanation, rather than with a desire to return to a fondly-remembered past. ( )

Părerea mea este că dacă vrei să vezi idei bune care ajung să fie stricate de insuși autorul lor, trebuie să citești Nostalgia. Cel mai lung și distrugător capitol a fost REM, așa că mi-am permis să trec peste anumite pagini ca să ajung cât mai repede la sfârșitul său.
Cu toate că în general mi-a displăcut cartea, trebuie să recunosc că povestirea Ruletistul și povestirea Arhitectul au fost destul de bune.
Știu că mulți îndrăgesc cartea aceasta dar, pur și simplu, nu mă fascinează deloc imaginea Bucureștiului de mai demult și blocurile pe care el le vede de la geam. ( )

Inquietante. Es un maestro de las palabras, crea sensaciones increíbles e imágenes impagables. ( )

Ten minutes in, the ticket inspector slides open the carriage door, casts a contempuous look about, and starts handing out pairs of binoculars that he extracts from his coat pocket. Turns out, the binoculars are a good call, creating as they do a feeling of camaraderie among the slightly anxious-looking passengers—we lay them side by side, brag about who has the bigest ones, and feel suddenly bonded in a covert and sacred mission. There's a weight to the clammy air that makes my ears pop. Some of the passengers have taken out snacks and appear to be looking out for whales. Personally, I'm not convinced we're underwater; we appear to be moving upwards, though. I press the binoculars to my eyes, but wondrous sights are hinted at only in glimmerring contour—the occasional golden spire twinkling through the mucky gray fog. This train ride is weird. I decide this can't be the main bit and take out a guidebook. The lady with the feathery hat appears to want to draw my attention to something, so I put my-whoa! What just happened there? What? Who said that?

Oh, it's You. I wasn't sure if you were going to show up. Some writers do, you know, but others find it intrusive: 'a good conductor should never be seen.' But You want to guide me. You're telling me to prepare myself, because the ride is about to begin—what I'll get out of it, you don't know. It's up to me. You tell me you will try to show me, try to make me understand. But you have tears in your eyes. "You would like to turn the reader's heart inside out," you growl, "and what does he do? At three he's done with your book, at four he takes up another—no matter how great the book you placed in his hands." The sign ahead says "First Chapter: The Roulette Player" and the train is still dragging its weels along. Chug-a-chug-a-chug-a-chug. I dig my face into the sweaty binoculars and look out again - the fog is gone; the picture clear. And then I see it. A near-vertical track has reached its peak and in one blink of an eye the train will start speeding downwards, laughing and choo-chooing—a long mad worm doing somersaults through the air (water?). I didn't think it would happen this way, so wild-wild-wild and, my God, for a few minutes it feels wonderful! And every time we slow down and I start getting bored, I think of you, and remember what you said about wanting to rip my heart out. And I feel guilty for the parts that I'm skimming, the minutes slipping away, the pages getting me closer to the end of the book. It's been a fun ride and all, but you haven't done it yet, no, and you so wanted to, and just when I think "it's too late, it's almost three o'clock" the last sign comes up ahead announcing the last chapter "The Architect". 'Oh well,' I think before I brace myself once again and this time—yes!—this time you rip my heart out with one quick move, one quick final story about the creation of the Universe, a sci-fi story as strange as it is wonderful. And man, I'm so glad you had a chance to do it because it's almost four now – time for a new book. ( )