Reviews

Belladonna by Daša Drndić

paulap's review against another edition

slow-paced

2.25

There were some interesting bits of reflection here, very literary and experimental. But for me, it also felt fragmented and lacking a point.

outromaria's review against another edition

informative reflective sad tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? N/A
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

sbkeats's review against another edition

dark informative reflective sad medium-paced

4.5

this book, for me, is soul food. Angry, allowing itself to be angry, and deeply compassionate. 

vitsa's review

challenging emotional informative reflective sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

I found this book very enlightening and felt like I learned a lot of new things. But the reading experience itself was not always enjoyable. I enjoyed the parts about Andreas' life and some of the historical stories, but there were a lot of references to people and events that I didn't know about and lacking the context made it hard to follow. 

halibut's review against another edition

5.0

Difficult, formally and thematically. The narrator Andreas Ban is roughly around retirement age, and seems to feel himself being hollowed out, but simultaneously surrounded by bits of the past or his past. An early theme is Ban's anger at the lack of consequence and subsequent return of Ustasha fascists and ideas. The party no longer formally exists, but Ban still feels a constant presence. The narration hops between fragments of history, to present day, to personal memories. I think Andreas sees his personal history in a similar way, as taking place in cities and socities which don't exist any more. The form similarly shifts, between long lists, chunks describing a series of photographs, imagined dialogues with other writers. It's pretty unrelentingly messy and angry, which is tough to spend a lot of time with; that's part of the fiction though, Ban's increasingly isolated with dwindling circle of friends. I'm glad I read it, though it took me a while.

binstonbirchill's review against another edition

5.0

The story of a man whose body is falling apart, the history of Croatian complicity in the holocaust, a wild sebaldian novel that is a joy to read. Gotta read more Drndić

freewaygods's review against another edition

dark emotional reflective fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Belladona is absolutely incredible, and reading Drndić is revelatory. She refuses to allow us to forget the past, and her work outlines the nightmare of all dead generations that weighs on the brains of us living.

While the novel is obstensibly about Andreas Ban and the deterioration of his body, the novel feels fragmentary (in the best ways) when Ban rails against the historical revisionism that's endemic to Europe, especially in the Balkans. The legacies of fascism are not in the past, they are alive, they built the very world we live in today. Andreas' discourse often veers off into what begin to feel like the firebrand Drndić herself excoriating those who would have us forget, those who would have tell us "it wasn't so bad" or "it's all in the past". 

And all of these digressions do not feel meandering, they don't slow the pace of the novel. Drndić will leave you decimated. There are two sections where she simply lists the names of mass murder victims, and it feels haunting and affecting — a worthy memorial. 

Belladona is not a happy book, but it is one that speaks to you, cuts directly through the schmaltz and bullshit. If you have not read any of her works before, you will be drawn in in an instant. You will want to go out and read more of her work. To me, Drndić seems to be the quintessential model for what an antifascist prose writer should be: her work is not puritanical moralizing, but it is not weepy liberalism either. Her prose is incendiary, confrontational, it is “heavenly music of obliteration”. 

motifenjoyer's review against another edition

4.0

"Andreas Ban had read somewhere that wars are orgies of forgetfulness. The twentieth century has archived vast catacombs, tunnels of information in which researchers get lost and in the end abandon their research, catacombs that ever fewer people enter. Stored away — forgotten. The twentieth century, a century of great tidying that ends in cleansing; the twentieth century, a century of cleansing, a century of erasure. Language perhaps remains, but it too is crumbling. A great burden falls on twentieth-century man and he drags himself out from under it, damaged. Did Pliny write somewhere that nothing in us is as fragile as memory, that dubious ability which builds and rebuilds a person. Whom should he now ask? How can he sort out that family defeat? Family secrets surface unexpectedly and too late. Whenever a person wishes to remember, up comes oblivion (or death), ready to pounce."

thehoodie's review against another edition

5.0

One of the most interesting and powerful books I have read

kingkong's review against another edition

4.0

Good effort but you can only feel bad for so long