CATCH THE RABBIT

A Yugoslav-born writer’s debut novel is a tale of fraught female friendship.

Translated from Serbo-Croatian to English by Bastašić herself, this tale explores the relationship of Sara and Lejla, childhood friends who grew up amid the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia. Twelve years after their last interaction, Sara—who now lives in Dublin—receives an urgent phone call from her friend and returns to Bosnia to help Lejla find her exiled brother, Armin. Sara narrates the story as a marginally fictionalized tale of her reunion with the reckless Lejla: “I am the one telling the story. I can do whatever I want with [Lejla]. She can’t do anything. She is three hits on the keyboard.” The two friends journey together to Vienna to search for Lejla’s brother, reconstructing their shared past and reconciling their differing memories of childhood events as they go. Lejla always pushed Sara beyond her comfort zone, and she resists easy characterization on the page. “Even now,” Sara says, “within this text, I can almost feel her fidget.” The bookish Sara has always defined herself in contrast to the wild Lejla, even when the contrast exists entirely in her own mind. Their friendship was important but also damaging to Sara because of the way she internalized this comparison. She refers to Lejla’s “subtle violence” and the ways Lejla influenced her behavior. It becomes clear that her youthful perception of this influence may not be entirely accurate. As the two travel north, Sara has to reconcile her memories (and her desire to fit them into a narrative) with the reality of adult Lejla. As children, Sara relied on Lejla as an ally: “She transformed two separate individuals into the two of us, something ours, indivisible, strong, and sinewy, spiteful before the whole universe,” yet after 12 years she is confronted with how they’ve grown up, apart.

A moving exploration of how perspective characterizes friendship, sometimes to a fault.