Girl at War by Sara Nović

Girl at War by Sara Nović  is a novel that tells the story of Ana Jurić.   When she was ten, her life was torn apart by a war in her home country of Croatia. Through a series of flashbacks, we learn what happened  to her and her family and how she ended up in the United States at a college in New York.  We see her struggle with her family and romantic relationships, we see her struggle to separate her past self from her current self, and struggle to determine where she belongs.

I actually used this book as a test to see if I could get ebooks from the library onto my Kindle (it was one of the only books on my list that was available to borrow immediately), so I quickly downloaded it without actually considering that a sad, sad book about a child in a war-torn country was probably not the best option for me during the COVID-19 pandemic and social isolation.  Ana, our main character, struggles with her sense of "home" so much in this novel and all I kept thinking about was how hard it must be for people who don't have safe homes to go to right now.  All those people who are in countries involved in war, refugees living in crowded camps, people in abusive homes, homeless people, people who live in shelters, and the list just kept growing in my brain and I just kept getting more and more verklempt.


Here's a line: In America I'd learned quickly what it was okay to talk about and what I should keep to myself. "It's terrible what happened there," people would say when I let slip my home country and explained that it was the one next to Bosnia. They'd heard about Bosnia; the Olympics had been there in '84.  When I was in college, I worked at a grocery store as a cashier during the summer in a city where there was one of the largest settlements of Rwandan refugees in the United States.  Two of our baggers were a teenage brother/sister pair of those refugees and I remember the sister telling me how much she missed her home country and how she longed to go back and I remember just wondering why she would want to go back to the place that caused her such pain.  Of course, I made the proper noises and asked her what she remembered and missed the most, but when I read that line in this novel, I was transported back to that 20-year old self I used to be and spent some time beating myself up for not asking MORE. 

It's a great book, it really is. The writing is amazing - vivid and striking. The character is so understandable - you really understand her motivations and actions.  The point of view is rich and clear - you immediately buy into the narrator's sense of detachment and wonder at how she went from one place to another. Nović is a marvel, really.  I didn't want to read this book (it was so sad), but I was unable to stop turning the pages and I was incredibly disappointed when I read the last page.  My Kindle said I was only 91% of the way through and I was almost angry that the majority of the last 9% was a book club guide/interview with the author, although I did think that the interview was worth reading since I knew nothing about Nović  before I started this book.

So I think you should definitely read this book. You'll learn a lot about Yugoslavia and the politics of the Baltic region. It'll make you seriously consider the limitations of your own ability to empathize and understand.  But I am not sure that I was in the right mental space for this novel right now.  I cried a lot.  But I'm going to recommend it as a book that everyone should absolutely read at some point in their life.  Just maybe not today.