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zwyrdish's review
4.0
A fun read, very quirky. I developed a real fondness for the author/main character - his adventures are at times incredible, but never quite unbelievable, and his honest self-portrayal of his emotions and actions made me very sympathetic to him. I absolutely loved the part where he makes up American English phrases to shout at the workers. Priceless.
georgiarose710's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
3.75
renecnielsen's review against another edition
5.0
Hemon has to be one of the best writers alive. These short stories are interlinked, but autonomous. They are rather autobiographical, but pure fiction. And all this simply works really well. But the greatest thing about Hemon is his use of the language. It simply doesn't get better. And, he's writing in his second (or third, perhaps) language, mind. Impressive.
annabarbarabittner's review against another edition
3.0
Do sięgnięcia po tę książkę skusił mnie kraj pochodzenia autora. Hemon jest Bośniakiem, który opuścił swoją ojczyznę jeszcze przed wojną. Jako stypendysta zamieszkał w Chicago i tam już pozostał.
Love and Obstacles to zbiór ośmiu opowiadań. W pierwszym z nich Hemon wspomina Conrada - emigranta, który pisał po angielsku. To odwołanie ściśle związane jest z autorem, także on tworzy w tym języku - na pozór zasymilowany z amerykańskim społeczeństwem, w swoich opowiadaniach ciągle wraca do Bośni. Każde z nich wydaje się być zabarwione autobiograficznie, bohaterem jest młody chłopak, kochający książki i marzący o karierze pisarza. Alter ego Hemona poznajemy na początku lat osiemdziesiątych w Kongu. Jako szesnastolatek odwiedza wraz z rodziną ojca, jugosłowiańskiego dyplomatę. W kolejnym opowiadaniu wysłany zostaję na granicę słoweńską, w celu zakupienia koniecznej dla rodziny zamrażarki. I te dwa pierwsze opowiadania najbardziej mi się podobały. Wraz z kolejnym tekstem Hemon przenosi się do Stanów Zjednoczonych, a Bośnia obecna jest tylko w reminiscencjach oraz pod postacią nie umiejących się przystosować do kanadyjskiej rzeczywistości rodziców.
Ciąg dalszy: https://przeczytalamksiazke.blogspot.pt/2017/02/love-and-obstacles-aleksandar-hemon.html
Love and Obstacles to zbiór ośmiu opowiadań. W pierwszym z nich Hemon wspomina Conrada - emigranta, który pisał po angielsku. To odwołanie ściśle związane jest z autorem, także on tworzy w tym języku - na pozór zasymilowany z amerykańskim społeczeństwem, w swoich opowiadaniach ciągle wraca do Bośni. Każde z nich wydaje się być zabarwione autobiograficznie, bohaterem jest młody chłopak, kochający książki i marzący o karierze pisarza. Alter ego Hemona poznajemy na początku lat osiemdziesiątych w Kongu. Jako szesnastolatek odwiedza wraz z rodziną ojca, jugosłowiańskiego dyplomatę. W kolejnym opowiadaniu wysłany zostaję na granicę słoweńską, w celu zakupienia koniecznej dla rodziny zamrażarki. I te dwa pierwsze opowiadania najbardziej mi się podobały. Wraz z kolejnym tekstem Hemon przenosi się do Stanów Zjednoczonych, a Bośnia obecna jest tylko w reminiscencjach oraz pod postacią nie umiejących się przystosować do kanadyjskiej rzeczywistości rodziców.
Ciąg dalszy: https://przeczytalamksiazke.blogspot.pt/2017/02/love-and-obstacles-aleksandar-hemon.html
bluenicorn's review
2.0
Maybe I'll come back to this... I just couldn't get into another story of a young man's coming of age. Although I read a few of the stories, and they weren't awful... Just not enough to pull me in.
kirstiecat's review
4.0
I really think Aleksandar Hemon is one of the most underrated authors of our time. Though I think some of his other works are more astounding outright, this is very subtly effective in its statements. He's had an interesting life and no doubt that helps make these stories diverse and exceptional. It's interesting to see how others and his experience have shaped him, making him one of the greatest authors of today. In this book, he skirts the line between what seems like fiction and nonfiction and makes us believe in the honor and beauty of both, which is remarkable.
I would recommend reading others of Hemon's first. Nowhere Man is fantastic and Lazarus Project is utterly brilliant but it's the kind of novel you savor and it takes you a long time to finish it because you don't want it to be finished.
I would recommend reading others of Hemon's first. Nowhere Man is fantastic and Lazarus Project is utterly brilliant but it's the kind of novel you savor and it takes you a long time to finish it because you don't want it to be finished.
annieinthearchives's review
adventurous
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
scann's review against another edition
challenging
dark
funny
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? N/A
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
vermidian's review
2.0
If I could give half stars, I would probably give it 2.5 stars.
While the book is made up of separate stories, they all are stories about the same nameless character - a Sarajevan boy who emigrates to Chicago in his adulthood. Each story has it's own separate place in the young man's life, each on a different topic and scarcely referencing one another as if they were in different realities almost.
But I do have to say, all of these stories are like retellings of a bittersweet memory and I really don't care for the person the character is.
In the second story, he drunkenly follows women around a dark city at night in the hope of getting laid and hands a birth control pill to a married woman across the hall from his hotel room. As a woman, this made me feel incredibly uncomfortable. I'm not sure why he felt the need to record a story about this man doing this.
In the third story, where he's less of an awful person, it details the decline of a poet he didn't actually like much as a person or as an author but desperately wanted the approval of. When he didn't get that approval, he stopped writing poetry. Eventually the poet he respected deteriorates into drunken stupors and crazed madness, encouraged by the war that the character fled from before it began and used to his advantage in America.
In the fourth story, he's a magazine subscription salesman and he uses the anger and grief of an unhappy family to sell magazine subscriptions to a priest who's crying about the young man living with him.
In the fifth story, it really doesn't revolve around the main character of the other stories. Instead, it's told as a third person perspective story for the most part. His piece of shit poker buddy takes in a refugee of the war, treats him like shit, and the main character does nothing despite knowing how awful the man is that the refugee is living with. He doesn't even warn him. The story ends with the man being punched so hard his eye pops out of his socket.
In the sixth story, American Commando, he and his friends spend months hurling glass and molotv cocktails at construction workers because it's the only thing they can think of doing when their usual play spot is demolished and paved over for a construction site. Seriously, even children are more empathetic than this piece of shit main character and his war-like friends. I'm surprised they didn't end up in prison.
The fifth and seventh stories are the most bearable, but even so the character is self-absorbed and uninteresting. The stories are strange, dark, and meaningless to me. The nameless narrator is not a person I would ever want to be friends with. And, actually, all of the people that he had been friends with at some point seemed to be horrible people or authors who entirely ignore him as a person and as a professional (I don't blame them.).
I will say the vocabulary and the nostalgic but melancholy voice of the whole book made it an interesting read. It's almost haunting, in a way. But this is not a fun book. In fact, there is very little humor in it at all - no comic relief, no happiness, no joy. The voice of every story is that same weirdly sad memory of what once was for the narrator.
If these were meant to be joyful moments, I hope I never have to meet a man such as the narrator.
While the book is made up of separate stories, they all are stories about the same nameless character - a Sarajevan boy who emigrates to Chicago in his adulthood. Each story has it's own separate place in the young man's life, each on a different topic and scarcely referencing one another as if they were in different realities almost.
But I do have to say, all of these stories are like retellings of a bittersweet memory and I really don't care for the person the character is.
Spoiler
In the first story, he makes bad decisions and has poor taste in friends. He makes friends with an American man who's a drug addict and obviously up to all sorts of illegal shit in Africa. I know he's sixteen in the story, but we've all been sixteen and most of us, I'm pretty sure, have not made friends with drug-addicted illegal arms dealers.In the second story, he drunkenly follows women around a dark city at night in the hope of getting laid and hands a birth control pill to a married woman across the hall from his hotel room. As a woman, this made me feel incredibly uncomfortable. I'm not sure why he felt the need to record a story about this man doing this.
In the third story, where he's less of an awful person, it details the decline of a poet he didn't actually like much as a person or as an author but desperately wanted the approval of. When he didn't get that approval, he stopped writing poetry. Eventually the poet he respected deteriorates into drunken stupors and crazed madness, encouraged by the war that the character fled from before it began and used to his advantage in America.
In the fourth story, he's a magazine subscription salesman and he uses the anger and grief of an unhappy family to sell magazine subscriptions to a priest who's crying about the young man living with him.
In the fifth story, it really doesn't revolve around the main character of the other stories. Instead, it's told as a third person perspective story for the most part. His piece of shit poker buddy takes in a refugee of the war, treats him like shit, and the main character does nothing despite knowing how awful the man is that the refugee is living with. He doesn't even warn him. The story ends with the man being punched so hard his eye pops out of his socket.
In the sixth story, American Commando, he and his friends spend months hurling glass and molotv cocktails at construction workers because it's the only thing they can think of doing when their usual play spot is demolished and paved over for a construction site. Seriously, even children are more empathetic than this piece of shit main character and his war-like friends. I'm surprised they didn't end up in prison.
The fifth and seventh stories are the most bearable, but even so the character is self-absorbed and uninteresting. The stories are strange, dark, and meaningless to me. The nameless narrator is not a person I would ever want to be friends with. And, actually, all of the people that he had been friends with at some point seemed to be horrible people or authors who entirely ignore him as a person and as a professional (I don't blame them.).
I will say the vocabulary and the nostalgic but melancholy voice of the whole book made it an interesting read. It's almost haunting, in a way. But this is not a fun book. In fact, there is very little humor in it at all - no comic relief, no happiness, no joy. The voice of every story is that same weirdly sad memory of what once was for the narrator.
If these were meant to be joyful moments, I hope I never have to meet a man such as the narrator.
melanie_reads's review
3.0
For a seemingly easy book of short stories, this is a difficult book. A series of inter conneceted stories across time and across the globe with a very big time marker - before the war in Bosnia-Sarajevo and the author's afterlife. Granted, maybe that break is exactly what Hemon is exposing. The utter incompatibility.