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Scherven (2013)

by Ismet Prcic(Favorite Author)

3.96 of 5 Votes: 3

languge

English

genre

Fiction

publisher

Agathon

review 1: I was not a fan of this book. I found myself skimming through a lot of it just because I wasn't interested or engaged with it. I can appreciate the risks he took with the form and use of the three different narrators. He often uses very robust and in-your-face language. He paints memorable scenes that will stick with you. It was certainly well-written and a very unique powerful book. But it just was not for me.
review 2: My enjoyment of a book is influenced by my mood when I read it. I was definitely in a great place when I finished this one (a tropical island off the coast of Cambodia), but it would have been a 5 star favourite nonetheless. Shards is an autobiographical story of a Bosnian refugee, and a tight and tense one at that. But it is more than this ... more- it's speaks of how it feels to be a person touched by war, to be a family separated and broken by conflict, to have the guilt of a survivor, to struggle to adapt to freedom.The central story is an account of how the author came to defect to America, and his descent once he gets there. It is interwoven with the story of Mustafa, who stayed behind and fought. Mustafa may have been a real person, but his story is almost certainly fiction - as played out in Prcic's mind - and he represents the author's sense of his 'better self'. We also read short letters that the author wrote to his mother but never posted... letters in which he displays his unravelling mind.I have made Shards sound like a very difficult book to read. It's not! Prcic treats his depressing subject matter with such a light touch that it never sinks. He weaves his story in an incredibly complex fashion, but does so in a way that it never feels out of reach. He is painfully open, but remains slightly (and sufficiently) detatched. This is a very readable novel from a talented writer. less

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