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millen13's review against another edition
4.0
A wonderfully haunting story about the effects of war.
The novel follows the writer's life during the war in Bosnia, and his life in America where he tries to deal with the mental aftermath. It also follows the exploits of a man the writer glancingly met while have to sign up for the army, but from then on keeps propping up everywhere.
All these shards of stories create an imperfect raw and touching whole.
The novel follows the writer's life during the war in Bosnia, and his life in America where he tries to deal with the mental aftermath. It also follows the exploits of a man the writer glancingly met while have to sign up for the army, but from then on keeps propping up everywhere.
All these shards of stories create an imperfect raw and touching whole.
catpdx's review against another edition
4.0
Certainly messy here and there, but worth reading. Brutal, brilliant, and emotional - full of despair and horror, but vividly full of life.
a_l_deleon's review against another edition
4.0
Shards is a compelling read. You don’t truly understand how all the pieces fit together until you get to the end, but the journey towards that understanding makes you feel as if you walked it with the characters and felt their pain through it all.
librarimans's review against another edition
5.0
This was an absolutely beautiful book about a survivor of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovinia in the early 90's told from the POV of a Bosnian young man. The narrative often jumps back and forth between the events of the story and then another story created by the main character about a person from his hometown of Tuzla. It can be disjointed at first but is definitely worth sticking with.
iguana_mama's review against another edition
3.0
Posted at Shelf Inflicted
I enjoy gripping, personal stories about surviving hardship during war, the mundane details of life that go on despite such major upheaval, and fitting in and finding one’s identity in a foreign land.
This fragmented tale is told from multiple perspectives, that of Ismet while he is living in California, Ismet growing up in war-torn Bosnia, and another Bosnian teenager named Mustafa whose experiences fuse with Ismet’s so strongly that it is difficult to tell what is real and what is imaginary. It is brilliant, unsettling, funny, and beautiful. It is also somewhat lacking in focus and felt too long in places.
There were gorgeous, moving passages like this one:
Laugh-out-loud funny passages like this:
And other passages that were a jumbled, pretentious mess. My favorite parts of the book were the stories about Ismet’s childhood in Bosnia, the heartbreaking stories of his depressed, chain-smoking mother and cheating father, the sweet stories of first love, and the funny stories about his acting in theatre.
I really hate the derogatory use of the word “pussy” to mean cowardly, and found the author used it frequently enough to annoy me and take me out of the story a few times.
Through his characters, real and imaginary, the author shows how difficult it can be to adjust to a new way of life. Though not a perfect story, it was a compelling one.
I enjoy gripping, personal stories about surviving hardship during war, the mundane details of life that go on despite such major upheaval, and fitting in and finding one’s identity in a foreign land.
This fragmented tale is told from multiple perspectives, that of Ismet while he is living in California, Ismet growing up in war-torn Bosnia, and another Bosnian teenager named Mustafa whose experiences fuse with Ismet’s so strongly that it is difficult to tell what is real and what is imaginary. It is brilliant, unsettling, funny, and beautiful. It is also somewhat lacking in focus and felt too long in places.
There were gorgeous, moving passages like this one:
"It was like we were driven to put that frame in front of us. To make a difference on those people’s faces, you know. Something. We let it sit in our laps, held it erect, and ceased all movement. We became a painting, staring out through the frame into the real world. And soon the real people stopped to stare at us, the painting, forgetting for a moment about the war, the oppressive psychosis that permeated everything. People have to look at art no matter what.
A bunch of children swarmed around us trying to catch a facial twitch and laughed giddily, waved their little hands in front of our eyes, and scratched their little heads when we wouldn’t think. Adults mostly stared from a distance, wondering why anybody would do this. Two elderly men with their hands behind their backs looked at us with brutal disgust, shaking their heads like the end of the world was coming and we were somehow responsible. And it would all have been an exercise in craft, a spur-of-the-moment performance-art piece, something nobody would remember for long, had it not started shelling and had we not, in our madness, remained motionless in spite of it, among the mad-dashing citizens."
Laugh-out-loud funny passages like this:
"I was the first one up there in my tighty-whities, screaming giddily, staring one moment at the blue sky, the next at my white feet slapping the hard surface of the white cement, until the whiteness ended abruptly in a horizontal line and I found myself airborne above the blue, beneath the blue, in the blue and going up, up, up, I swear to God I would have been the first human to really fly had I not remembered, going up into the blue like that, that all my money was rolled up in a tobacco pouch hanging next to a pouch of another kind in my underwear."
And other passages that were a jumbled, pretentious mess. My favorite parts of the book were the stories about Ismet’s childhood in Bosnia, the heartbreaking stories of his depressed, chain-smoking mother and cheating father, the sweet stories of first love, and the funny stories about his acting in theatre.
I really hate the derogatory use of the word “pussy” to mean cowardly, and found the author used it frequently enough to annoy me and take me out of the story a few times.
Through his characters, real and imaginary, the author shows how difficult it can be to adjust to a new way of life. Though not a perfect story, it was a compelling one.
kwilson271's review against another edition
4.0
A Bosnian refugee falls apart, and all to pieces, due to a bad case of survivor's guilt. This book is well written, but experimental. Readers need to be very patient around the middle. I almost gave up, confused about what was going on; but the book needs to be structured that way.
mrz_owenz's review against another edition
5.0
The mix of reality and imagination keeps you a bit on edge and confused but that serves to reinforce the chaos of a refugee's/soldier's life. Overall, this book is compelling and beautifully written.
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