Infidelities

July 25, 2005
Croatian-born author Novakovich infuses this 11-story collection (April Fool's Day
; Yolk
) with a strong sense that God never revisits the past. The only thing that changes is the grip our memory has on the past—or it has on us. In "A Bridge Under the Danube," an elderly Serb couple, Milka and Drago Zivkovic, are driven from their home in Croatia to the Serb city of Novi Sad in a round of ethnic cleansing. There, they cling to their last possession, their faith, even as NATO bombs the city. "A Purple Story," a masterly blend of reflection and horrifying farce, details a man's dashed hopes as he awaits a heart transplant. Ranko shares a hospital room with a wounded man who, to Ranko's horror, is scheduled to donate his heart upon death. When he expires, though, a general commandeers the organ—which turns out to be faulty anyway. In "Stamp," Nedjeljko Cabrinovic, one of Archduke Ferdinand's assassins, pens an account of the murder that ignited WWI, occasioned by a letter of forgiveness from the Archduke's children. Novakovich has perfected the grand style of the Continental anecdote, with its structured pace mounting to that slightly perverse concluding moment when retrospection falls prey to irony.

August 1, 2005
Although Novakovich left Croatia some years ago, he continues to write about his homeland with flinty precision and a peppery brew of sublimated emotions. A wry and compassionate observer, Novakovich is especially heedful of the tragic ludicrousness of ethnic hatred and war. His first novel, " April Fool's Day" (2004), was enthusiastically received, and here, in his third short story collection, he proves once again to be a commanding storyteller, writing with equal insight into moments intimate and political. In "Spleen," a woman who fled Bosnia after being assaulted eventually settles in Cleveland only to find that her attractive new Bosnian neighbor may be her assailant. In "Neighbors," a Serbian shop owner married to a Croat and living in Croatia can't decide whether to stay or go after his shop is vandalized. An immigrant from the "old Yugoslavia" has a curious exchange with a beautiful Russian on a crowded Manhattan subway. Fluent in the many shades of meaning conveyed in the subtlest of gestures and the briefest of conversations, and gifted with a stinging sense of humor, Novakovich fashions take-charge tales of displacement that embody the fracturing of war and the misdirection of lust, the dream of sanctuary and the chasm of loneliness. For other novels about exile and immigration, see the Read-alikes column opposite. (Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)