An affecting dramatization of the torment caused by violent national conflict.
A Yugoslavian farmer encounters a wave of ethnic hatred unleashed by civil war in this historical novel.
Gvozden Mishic lives a quiet life as a farmer in Yugoslavia with his wife, Yadranka, and young daughter, Anna, willfully indifferent to the political tumult that gradually engulfs his country. He clings to a “black-and-white” worldview, quixotically attached to the dream of Yugoslavian unity that history has repeatedly refuted. Yet the signs of the country’s devolution into chaos following the death of its autocrat president, Josip Broz Tito, in 1980 are unmistakable, however reluctant he is to acknowledge them. But he has no choice when the military demands his presence and he is enlisted into a unit searching for Muslim insurrectionists. He finally realizes that “war would start, the war that will horrify the whole world, that hatred overwhelmed the hearts of all Yugoslav nations, and when this blood of the Balkans starts boiling, reason ceases to exist, not as a mere word, and even less as a state of human mind.” The violent assignment forces him to witness unspeakable atrocities committed by his own fellow soldiers. He desperately wants to return home to defend his family from roaming Muslim paramilitary groups. When he finally makes the trip, he finds both his wife and daughter dead, brutally raped and murdered. He had entrusted their safety to Senad Hojic, a close friend and Muslim he considered a brother. Gvozden is given information that Senad is responsible for the slaughter of his family. Bojčić poignantly chronicles Gvozden’s grim personal trajectory from an apolitical idealist to an angry partisan hungry for revenge, a metamorphosis so complete he finally becomes a “wanted war criminal,” precisely the kind of man he once detested.
The author unflinchingly captures the inexorable ugliness of this “fratricidal war” and a world in which “lives are cheap, and people are killed everywhere.” Gvozden begins the novel disfigured by rage at the inhuman crimes his comrades commit and then ultimately participates in the very same horrors, inspired by an implacable hatred that relieves him of any moral scruples. Bojčić’s prose can be a touch heavy-handed, and his inclination to melodrama can come across as didactic: “Who would be able to destroy the mighty and harmonious Yugoslavia, united by the blood of partisans, into whose foundation millions of people laid their lives? Nobody could do it, but ourselves….” The first half of the novel especially has the feel of a parable meant to impart a moralistic lesson and, like all proselytizing, has a mark of condescension. The book is prefaced with an unnecessary history lesson that only reinforces this impression; the tale would have been all the more moving if left to stand on its own. But the story’s second half is undeniably powerful, artfully charting the ways in which the traumas of war can irreparably destroy a soldier’s soul.
An affecting dramatization of the torment caused by violent national conflict.Pub Date: Feb. 19, 2020
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 146
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Aug. 13, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.
An artwork’s value grows if you understand the stories of the people who inspired it.
Never in her wildest dreams would foster kid Louisa dream of meeting C. Jat, the famous painter of The One of the Sea, which depicts a group of young teens on a pier on a hot summer’s day. But in Backman’s latest, that’s just what happens—an unexpected (but not unbelievable) set of circumstances causes their paths to collide right before the dying 39-year-old artist’s departure from the world. One of his final acts is to bequeath that painting to Louisa, who has endured a string of violent foster homes since her mother abandoned her as a child. Selling the painting will change her life—but can she do it? Before deciding, she accompanies Ted, one of the artist’s close friends and one of the young teens captured in that celebrated painting, on a train journey to take the artist’s ashes to his hometown. She wants to know all about the painting, which launched Jat’s career at age 14, and the circle of beloved friends who inspired it. The bestselling author of A Man Called Ove (2014) and other novels, Backman gives us a heartwarming story about how these friends, set adrift by the violence and unhappiness of their homes, found each other and created a new definition of family. “You think you’re alone,” one character explains, “but there are others like you, people who stand in front of white walls and blank paper and only see magical things. One day one of them will recognize you and call out: ‘You’re one of us!’” As Ted tells stories about his friends—how Jat doubted his talents but found a champion in fiery Joar, who took on every bully to defend him; how Ali brought an excitement to their circle that was “like a blinding light, like a heart attack”—Louisa recognizes herself as a kindred soul and feels a calling to realize her own artistic gifts. What she decides to do with the painting is part of a caper worthy of the stories that Ted tells her. The novel is humorous, poignant, and always life-affirming, even when describing the bleakness of the teens’ early lives. “Art is a fragile magic, just like love,” as someone tells Louisa, “and that’s humanity’s only defense against death.”
A tender and moving portrait about the transcendent power of art and friendship.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781982112820
Page Count: 448
Publisher: Atria
Review Posted Online: July 4, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2025
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
