Dear Marble Slab

With effortless narrative ease and continually self-replenishing inspiration, Louna constructs an impressive palimpsest that never flags in its momentum, managing to pull the reader along into the depths of despair and the pathways of psychological collapse, while effortlessly exploring the expanses of a dark territory. It is also ambitious because, from the very beginning, she knows how she wants to use the content of the letters that make up the bulk of the novel, never getting carried away or seduced by her own pen.

The book is a hymn to literature as a way of life, to the conscious and unconscious ways in which it shapes the self, contributes to our narrative, and molds our subjectivity, making each and every one of us the author of our own life.

In her second novel, Rena Louna speaks of the inextricable coexistence of love, mourning, and writing; of the way trauma is transformed into narrative, and literature becomes not a refuge, but an insistent way to endure the truth—or perhaps to lose sight of it altogether.

Louna writes with imagination, intelligence, and daring. If in "The Foxes of Père-Lachaise" she demonstrated her ability to create atmospheres and characters through a language that is both sensitive and piercing, in her new novel she transforms the very act of writing into the central event of the narrative.

– Chrysa Fanti, Efimerida ton Syntakton

A novel about the limits of love and identity, as well as the fine line between creation and collapse.

How beautiful Rena Louna's writing is! What a fluid, exuberant, and generous use of language! A book dedicated from the first sentence to the last to the pleasure of literature as an inescapable refuge for the born (or rather doomed) writer, who knows no other way to experience the world and its mysteries outside of words. It has been a long time since I last plunged so deeply into an epistolary novel that is not afraid to attune itself completely to the tremors of a defenceless love. Perhaps some readers will grow weary of the relentless literary and anecdotal references, but inside my own head, they went off like little fireworks.

Rena Luna writes a novel in whose complex web there is room for many things: the love affair between a student and a married creative writing professor (to whom she writes her letters), life in Paris, social encounters, and the broad literary coordinates of her universe. The way she portrays the inner world and weaves the protagonist’s psyche is truly charming.

– Giorgos Psomiadis, K Magazine

Rena Luna's second novel possesses many of the virtues of her first. As in that work, here too the author boldly grapples with a major theme, besieging once again the same ancient enigma—the profound erotic feeling that connects a man and a woman, or remains unrequited, and specifically in its modern version and from the female perspective. As in her previous book, here too the narrative talent she undoubtedly possesses is evident—a necessary quality for any ambitious novelist.

Luna dares to delve into the investigative analytical depth of the novel. Into the fertile expansiveness that cumulatively and cyclically builds the precious fictional horizon, within which the dramatic tensions of the characters are cultivated, with the aim not, of course, of gender activism or epistemological precision, but of the allure of the story. [...] The author excels in documenting her heroine's journey from enthusiasm to devastation and, finally, to the mature reclamation of her innocence: that enviable blend of child and woman.

Rena Luna signs a masterfully structured novel about our voracious need for connection, acceptance, and tenderness. Dark and sensitive, with a subtle irony lurking discreetly, it compels you to love it from the very first pages.

– Marie Claire

Luna's second epistolary novel captures a fragile psychological journey between guilt, desire, and excess.

– Fotini Simou, ELLE

Her second novel, "Dear Marble Slab", exudes maturity and confidence. It is a well-crafted epistolary novel with impressive language and strong literary roots. Luna invests in the interiority of the character study while simultaneously engaging in a literary game that involves the narrator, the characters, and the readers themselves. The result is a love "letter" to Literature, which, as it seems, can become either a prison or a place of absolute freedom.