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imo_reads's review against another edition
emotional
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
5.0
This is a deeply moving book that chronicles the life and times of Sarajevans as their city slips slowly out of their grasp and into the depths of war. The narrative masterfully conveys the creeping sense of dread that things will not get better, interlaced with moments of unity and hope. It aims not to sensationalise or to shock, but to give a true sense of what life was like for ordinary people in Sarajevo in that first brutal year of the war - and it illustrates this with breathtaking clarity. Should be compulsory reading for everyone in light of the war in Ukraine.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Religious bigotry, Child death, Murder, Xenophobia, Death, and War
Moderate: Confinement, Infidelity, Injury/Injury detail, Animal death, and Blood
Minor: Suicidal thoughts and Vomit
miaaa_lenaaa's review against another edition
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.75
I really really enjoyed this, a very human view of war and its effects. I dont really know anything about this period in history and i think that reflected zoras own bafflement at what is happening. It’s beautifully written and while i didnt cry it came really close a few times.
Potential spoilers in quotes
‘The threshold between night and day feels uncertain, as if she could just as easily slip back into the night as go forwards into the day.’
‘Surely, the so-called Chetniks will shave off their beards and put their grandfather uniforms back in their dressing-up boxes.’
‘Zora stares at the opening, which is greyish white. The colour of nothing - of the void.’
‘Upstairs, it's the space under the arch in her painting that consumes her attention. She spends an age mixing the exact colour. She exaggerates its roundness and is depth. She wants the hole both to recede and at the same time to dominate in an unsettling way, pushing and pulling the viewer, so that the eye, wanting to be drawn to the beauty of the architecture of the stone arch above, or to the gorgeous yellow of the spear-headed flower in the foreground, will continually resist and slide back, halfwilling, half-dragged, into the cave-like void under the bridge.’
‘Everything came into focus as if with the twist of a kaleidoscope.’
‘The woman lies lifeless on the tarmac, her back curved, as if protectively, around a pool of dark blood.’
‘And although she'd tried to explain, her mother hadn't understood at all. And the more Zora had talked, the more she realised she had no idea why this war was happening either.’
‘She finds a candle in the dressing table drawer, but its glow only seems to intensify the stickiness of the halflight that filters through bin bags hanging over the broken windows. Unfamiliar shadows brush against her shins.’
‘The boxes of humanitarian aid are a blessing and a joke.’
‘Looking back to the fire, she realises that what she took for crows circling the Vijecnica are the burnt pages of books. The fragments of her paintings will be there, too, rising and falling over the pyre.’
‘'Black butterflies… Burnt fragments of poetry and art catching in people's hair.'’
‘Behind the walls of snow the sun must be shining quite brightly, because her flat, normally as dark as the grave, is almost radiant with soft white light. Everything seems more manageable now. Soon the holes and craters in the buildings and roads will be masked and Sarajevo will appear beautiful again.’
‘The flat is drawing in on itself, Zora thinks as she inches closer to the stove each night. It's being taken over, room by room, by ice, wind and snow. By the outside. By the war.’
‘The mountains press close and folds of silencing snow lie on the rooftops of the houses below.’
‘It's hard to tell whether this is the first streak of the rising sun or the reflection of buildings on fire.’
‘But Sarajevo is entirely hidden, thank God. Not a tower block, minaret or steeple breaks through the white. Better that way.
Better not to be able to see.’
‘But the thing is she didn't die. No, she went on, just as everyone goes on.
There are no beginnings and no endings. Just war.’
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Body horror, Grief, Gun violence, Animal death, War, Death, Murder, Child death, Fire/Fire injury, Islamophobia, and Mass/school shootings
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