Croatia – MostlyFiction Book Reviews We Love to Read! Sat, 28 Oct 2017 19:51:27 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.4.25 EUROPE IN SEPIA by Dubravka Ugresic /2014/europe-in-sepia-by-dubravka-ugresic/ Fri, 21 Feb 2014 13:07:30 +0000 /?p=25745 Book Quote:

“Every day the world we’re living in is increasingly turning into…a circus. Yes, I know, the comparison’s a dull one. It’s what people used to say in ancient B.G., (Before Google). It’s a compete circus! My life has turned into a circus! Politics is a circus! The word ‘circus’ was an analogy for chaos, madness, unbecoming behavior, for events that had gotten out of hand, for life’s more grotesque turns. It’s possible, though, that the word might soon regain currency. Let’s remember P. T. Barnum for a second, father of the circus and American millionaire, and his declaration that ‘no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.’ Barnum’s cynical declaration naturally doesn’t only apply to Americans. The circus is global entertainment.”

Book Review:

Review by Jana L. Perskie  (FEB 21, 2014)

Dubravka Ugresic’s new collection of cultural essays deal, primarily, with “Nostalgia,” the title of her first piece.

Ms. Ugresice is a Croatian, formally a Yugoslavian, who now lives in Amsterdam.

Her essays delve into politics, history, popular US, Yugoslavian and European culture from the 1950’s to the 21st century, as well as her own thoughts and flights of fancy. She is branded a “Yugonostalgnic,” by many of her fellow countrymen and women. This is a derogatory term, a synonym for those who long for the days of the Yugoslavia of yore under the reign of Tito; dinosaurs who look back fondly to the slogan “brotherhood and unity.”

Her “Yugonostalgia” began before the death of Tito, before the unified country of Yugoslavia broke up into six different states: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Slovenia and Serbia. “Back then I was haunted by an unnerving premonition that the world around me was about to suddenly vanish.” She wonders if she has developed what psychologists call LAT, or “Low Authoritarianism Syndrome.”

The collection’s first essay, which really captivated me, has the author visiting New York City in 2011. She is searching for Zucotti Park during the “Occupy Wall Street” protests. She asks a stranger, “Excuse me, where’s the ah, revolution.” She wonders if “a long dormant rebel virus” was stirring in her.

She visits Washington Square in New York City’s Greenwich Village and laments the absence of the “dropouts, the refuseniks, the superfluous men and women, the alcoholics and smokers, the homeless, the pickpockets the vagrants, the hustlers, the grumblers grumbling to themselves, the idlers, the losers, the dreamers,” of before…the Washington Square Park as she remembers it.

The author was born in 1949, around the time when Marshall Josip Broz Tito, a statesman, revolutionary and authoritarian head of the post WWII state of Yugoslavia, told Soviet dictator Stalin “NO!” He modeled his economic development plan independently from Moscow, which resulted in a diplomatic escalation followed by a bitter exchange of letters in which Tito affirmed that although his country would follow the examples of the Soviet system, his country would remain separate from Russia and the Eastern Bloc Countries. Ms. Ugresic seems to be having trouble with what the future has brought. She asks herself, “What in her lifetime of civil war, new passports and fractured identities, betrayals, etc., had actually been realized of all the things promised to us by communists’ ideologues.”

She reflects on a post Soviet Union world, “a BG, (Before Google),” world. However, although she paints the past with artificial colors, (which she is very much aware of), she really doesn’t want to turn time back, but is not happy with life in the present. The author quotes Peter Sloterdijk, a German philosopher, cultural theorist TV host and columnist, “Europe no longer loves life. The radiance of historical fulfillment is gone, in its place only exhaustion, the entropic qualities of an aging culture,” a reign of “spiritual nakedness.” Yes, she agrees, “Europe is in decay.”

With a wry, often quirky sense of humor, she does riffs on 21st century Europe – western and eastern. The essays contain comments on the Netherlands, where undocumented immigrants are not wanted. Here Poles are branded as thieves – they are blamed for everything that goes wrong. Even the Polish prostitutes flourish, taking work away from Amsterdam’s ever famous “ladies” who work their trade in the infamous red light district. As far as Hungary goes – they are “anti-Semitic and despise the Roma, (gypsies).” She muses on formerly great Russian literature and Europe’s neglected film industry, where only yesterday directors, i.e., Luis Bunuel, Ingmar Bergman, Lina Wertmueller, Federico Fellini, Jean-Luc Goddard, Sergei Eisenstein, Michelangelo Antonioni, etc., created cinematic masterpieces. She even mentions the popularity of aquarium ownership among wealthy young men, to the marginalization of unattractive people.

There are also pieces ranging from her travels to USA’s Midwest and her native Zagreb, from Ireland to Israel. There are lots of personal anecdotes here. Her insights on the people she meets in her travels are perceptive. Like an anthropologist, she analyzes the norms of the times and writes of “Lookism.” ” ‘Lookism’ is a widespread and very powerful prejudice based on a person’s physical appearance.” It is discriminatory. Fat people are targeted as ugly. Even Sak’s Fifth Avenue has closed their plus-size department. Fat people and smokers are “intolerable social evils.”

The “Sepia” from the title refers to the past…to old photographs in sepia.

These essays are passionate, intriguing, and skillfully written. They should appeal to those who are curious about the take on today’s world by a woman who is the product of both a communist regime and the “now” of the 21st century. Highly recommended. (Translated from the Croatian by David Williams.)

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 1 readers
PUBLISHER: Open Letter Books; Reprint edition (February 18, 2014)
REVIEWER: Jana L. Perskie
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? Not Yet
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Dubravka Ugresic
EXTRAS: Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

Bibliography:

Non-fiction:

]]> BABA YAGA LAID AN EGG by Dubravka Ugresic /2010/baba-yaga-laid-an-egg-by-dubravka-ugresic/ Wed, 03 Feb 2010 20:52:48 +0000 /?p=7654 Book Quote:

“You don’t see them at first. Then suddenly a random detail snags your attention like a stray mouse: an old lady’s handbag, a stocking slipping down a leg, bunching up on a bulging ankle, crocheted gloves on the hands, a little old-fashioned hat perched on the head, sparse grey hair with a blue sheen.”

Book Review:

Review by Poornima Apte (FEB 3, 2010)

Baba Yaga is a star player in Eastern European myths. The Russian version involves a crackly old witch ready to spark terror in children’s hearts. Croatian author Dubravka Ugresic, in her wonderful book, Baba Yaga Laid an Egg, lays out modern-day interpretations of this age-old myth.

These “witches,” Ugresic tells us, are all around us—old women limbs curling from arthritis, shuffling along, waiting, pondering the end of their lives. The book is laid out in three sections—each a different take on the myth.

The first one touchingly details the relationship between an old woman and her daughter (the narrator). Living in exile in Zagreb, the old lady spends each of her days with fixed routines—a treat at the local pastry shop, a glance at the newspaper, dusting perhaps. Ugresic does such a brilliant job detailing this woman’s every action and gesture as she waits slowly for death to come, that the book is worth reading for this alone. “She uttered her truisms with special weight,” the narrator writes of her mother, “Truisms gave her the feeling, I suppose, that everything was fine, that the world was precisely where it should be, that she was in control and had the power to decide.”

Plagued by dementia partly from old age and partly from cancer that has spread to the brain and is barely contained, her one regret is not being able to see the city of her youth ever again. “She had snapped shut almost all of her emotional files. One of them was slightly open: it was Varna, the city of her childhood and youth.” Since she is not capable of travel, Mom sets the daughter off to find and record the city of her youth.

Some background information about the author would be relevant here. Dubravka Ugresic now lives in Amsterdam with a Dutch passport. When war broke out in Croatia in the early 90’s she took a stand against the nationalistic government for which she was forced out of the country as part of a “witch hunt.” An exile herself, you can detect the emotional weight of Ugresic’s own experiences here. In the story, when the narrator returns to her mother with pictures of her hometown now irrevocably changed, the mother can no longer recognize it. It’s a haunting and moving portrait not just of old age, but also of exile’s deep loneliness.

The second interpretation looks at three old women—Beba, Pupa and Kukla—who visit a newly founded spa retreat as part of their joint vacation together. The friends kick it up and have a good time even as the story individually zooms in on each woman’s life regrets.

To each of these women, love doesn’t (or hasn’t) come easy. The “egg” in the title too is based on a Russian folktale and it stands for love—one that is nearly inaccessible. “Love is on the distant shore of a wide sea,” goes the legend. “A large oak tree stands there, and in the tree there is a box, in the box a rabbit, in the rabbit a duck, and in the duck an egg. And the egg in order to get the emotional mechanism going, had to be eaten.”

So even if “Baba Yaga” has laid an egg, will it get eaten and by whom? In here Ugresic also does a wonderful job of showing up the beauty industry and all its attempts at keeping old age at bay.

The final interpretation is an essay laid out by a folklorist, Aba Bagay, who offers the general discourse and ideas behind the Baba Yaga myth. In a final fantastic touch, she slowly morphs into that crackling, bird-like creature a part of “Hags International.”

It is important to note here that writing about old age and women is not easy. This is the sort of material that can easily slip into gushy sentimentality. But Ugresic is a far better writer than that. Baba Yaga Laid an Egg is funny, touching and even illuminating—but never, ever sappy. It’s going on my list for top reads for the year. Her interpretations of the original myth are searing and inventive. “They shuffle around the world like armies of elderly angels,” Ugresic writes of these sweet old ladies. In other words, Baba Yaga is only as scary (or as endearing) as the old ladies we all know. That ought to reassure the young ones, shouldn’t it?

In her wild, fun and imaginative book, Dubravka Ugresic turns the myth of Baba Yaga on its head. While doing so, she validates what Bette Davis once said (and what one of Ugresic’s characters also acknowledges): “Old age is no place for sissies.”

AMAZON READER RATING: stars-4-0from 6 readers
PUBLISHER: Canongate U.S.; Tra edition (February 2, 2010)
REVIEWER: Poornima Apte
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK? YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE: Dubravka Ugresic
EXTRAS: Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION: Read our review of:

And of another interesting book:

Bibliography:

Non-fiction:

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