15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Heartbreakingly funny and sad, July 23, 2003
This review is from: Plum Brandy: Croatian Journeys (Terra Incognita Series, 7) (Paperback)
I laughed out loud at the wry and tender humour Novakovich brings to these intimate essays. Several of these essays belong alongside David Sedaris' writing about his misadventures in France--insightful, intimate, and heartbreakingly funny observations on our human predicament. Picking up this book is so much like sitting in a Balkan cafe with a long-lost friend telling exquiste funny / sad stories that leave you hanging on every word that later you swear you can smell the espresso, brandy and smoke. Reccomended!
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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Josip Novakovich is an extremely gifted writer, July 4, 2003
This review is from: Plum Brandy: Croatian Journeys (Terra Incognita Series, 7) (Paperback)
This is a collection of stories from an award-winning author who straddles two very different worlds. Born in Croatia when it was still part of Yugoslavia, he emigrated to the United States at age 20. He has traveled back to Croatia many times and spent some time there during the brake up of Yugoslavia. As both a native Croat and an American he was able to view the turbulent times of the 90s with the detachment of an outsider looking in and the insight of a native son. This book however is not about the war in former Yugoslavia but a collection of personal experiences that took place at that time.
In the following example he manages to tell us, in a personal way, something about the Serb rebellion in the Krajina region of Croatia. In the Guns of August essay, he writes: I took a train ride to Rijeka or rather I wanted to. The train was cancelled: the line passed along the Krajina region. I took the bus, and it went right to the Slovenian border. Krajina had squeezed the rest of Croatia all the way to Slovenia at one point.
In another essay, he describes in lyrical prose moments of his childhood in a Croatian village: My sweating father interrupted carving wood and gave me leafy red bank notes to buy loaves. Yeasty smells drew the townspeople who were still fresh from rising in a cold dawn to the old bakery with its uneven walls and swelling mortar. Beyond the threshold, I saw naked and skinless white loaves slide into the metal oven above the random licks of flames. Soon a pale man sprinkled water from a crimson cup, glazing the emerging an tanning bread skins into polished crusts.
Josip Novakovich is an extremely gifted writer who offered me, the reader, genuine pleasure out of the simple act of reading. I recommend this book highly because I am certain it will have the same effect on you.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Plum brandy, plum dumplings!!!!, September 14, 2007
This review is from: Plum Brandy: Croatian Journeys (Terra Incognita Series, 7) (Paperback)
I agree with the prior reviews re: "Plum Brandy." For me, the final chapter on Josip searching for his grandmother's grave in Cleveland is worth the price on its own. Reminded me of my search (less complicated!) for the grave of my Slovenian great-aunt Marija in Saint Louis. The effect was very sentimental and uniquely personal. The memories of time spent and years since her death race through the mind. Glad to see another example of good relations between Slovenes and Croats. We are much more culturally and politically similar than different.
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