Pretty Birds

Starred review from April 11, 2005
Young women served as snipers for both Bosnian and Serbian forces during the siege of Sarajevo; Simon, a prize-winning correspondent and NPR Weekend Edition
host, interviewed one of them and has masterfully imagined her life. The book begins with half-Muslim Irena, 17, perched on a rooftop, wearing a black ski mask, sighting down a rifle and listening to a sneering Serbian propagandist on the radio ("The Yanks send you food Americans wouldn't give to their dogs") before she pulls the trigger. Simon then flashes back to the spring of 1992, when Irena, her parents and her parrot, Pretty Bird, must flee their home on the mostly Serb side of the city. When they make it (barely) to her grandmother's apartment, they find her slain on the staircase. Simon's account of the family's refugee life—sans water, electricity and supplies, they eat snail-and-grass soup—is full of brilliant details ranging from the comic to the heartbreaking. When a former assistant principal spots Irena, once a high school basketball star, he offers her a job that quickly has her recruited, indoctrinated and trained in deception and weaponry. That's when the action really begins to move along. Pretty Bird is released for mercy's sake, flies to his old home and is caught by Amela—a Christian and Irena's former classmate and teammate—who concocts a devious and difficult plan to return him to her friend. A deeply felt, boldly told story and clean, forceful prose distinguish this striking first novel. Agent, Jonathan Lazear.

June 1, 2005
Ever wonder what it's like to be a sniper? How about a teenage female sniper during the Yugoslav war of 1991 -95? Through 17-year-old Irena Zaric -by no means a traditional Muslim, as she relishes celebrity magazines, drinks alcohol, swears, and smokes -first novelist Simon offers readers a window into that world. The skillfully crafted ebb and flow brings basketball star Irena to life as she courageously defends her family and friends in appalling circumstances. The author, host of NPR's "Weekend Edition Saturday", has worked as a war correspondent in Sarajevo, and it shows in the authentic, gritty details. The agony of conflicting loyalties especially comes through in this outstanding debut, which includes cameos by Osama bin Laden, Kenneth Branagh, and Radovan Karadzic. Dedicated to the people of Sarajevo ("those who fell in her defense, and defended her ideals"), "Pretty Birds" is far better than Jonathan Rabb's conspiracy thriller "The Book of Q" and Natasha Radojcic-Kane's more partisan and unrelentingly grim "Homecoming". For a Croatian perspective, see Slavenka Drakulic's "S.: A Novel About the Balkans". Highly recommended for all adult fiction collections. -Mark André Singer, Mechanics' Inst. Lib., San Francisco

Copyright 2005 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2005
Irena Zaric, a high-school basketball star in Sarajevo, is more preoccupied with game strategy and an affair with her coach than with her Muslim ethnicity. But when the Bosnian Serbs begin their campaign of ethnic cleansing, Irena and her parents find themselves among throngs of Muslims brutalized and driven from their homes. They take refuge in her grandmother's apartment and begin a regime for survival that has the father digging ditches for the military. Irena brings home beer and cigarettes from an ersatz job in a brewery that provides cover for a team of snipers led by Tedic, a Muslim with a knack for spotting talent he can use. Irena becomes disturbingly good at her task, growing a veneer of cynicism even as she pores over outdated Western magazines for fashion news and the latest antics of Madonna and Michael Jackson. Simon, who has covered the siege of Sarajevo for NPR, puts the events in a war-torn land into human perspective with memorable characters struggling with issues of ethnicity, survival, friendship, and betrayal.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)