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Girl at War: A Novel
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Girl at War: A Novel
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Girl at War: A Novel
Audiobook7 hours

Girl at War: A Novel

Written by Sara Novic

Narrated by Julia Whelan

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

4/5

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Currently unavailable

About this audiobook

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY BOOKPAGE, BOOKLIST, AND ELECTRIC LITERATURE • ALEX AWARD WINNER • LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE FINALIST • LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION

For readers of The Tiger's Wife and All the Light We Cannot See comes a powerful debut novel about a girl's coming of age-and how her sense of family, friendship, love, and belonging is profoundly shaped by war.


Zagreb, 1991. Ana Jurić is a carefree ten-year-old, living with her family in a small apartment in Croatia's capital. But that year, civil war breaks out across Yugoslavia, splintering Ana's idyllic childhood. Daily life is altered by food rations and air raid drills, and soccer matches are replaced by sniper fire. Neighbors grow suspicious of one another, and Ana's sense of safety starts to fray. When the war arrives at her doorstep, Ana must find her way in a dangerous world.

New York, 2001. Ana is now a college student in Manhattan. Though she's tried to move on from her past, she can't escape her memories of war-secrets she keeps even from those closest to her. Haunted by the events that forever changed her family, Ana returns to Croatia after a decade away, hoping to make peace with the place she once called home. As she faces her ghosts, she must come to terms with her country's difficult history and the events that interrupted her childhood years before.

Moving back and forth through time, Girl at War is an honest, generous, brilliantly written novel that illuminates how history shapes the individual. Sara Nović fearlessly shows the impact of war on one young girl-and its legacy on all of us. It's a debut by a writer who has stared into recent history to find a story that continues to resonate today.

Praise for Girl at War

"Outstanding . . . Girl at War performs the miracle of making the stories of broken lives in a distant country feel as large and universal as myth."-The New York Times Book Review (Editor's Choice)

"[An] old-fashioned page-turner that will demand all of the reader's attention, happily given. A debut novel that astonishes."-Vanity Fair

"Shattering . . . The book begins with what deserves to become one of contemporary literature's more memorable opening lines. The sentences that follow are equally as lyrical as a folk lament and as taut as metal wire wrapped through an electrified fence."-USA Today

"Gripping . . . Nović, in tender and eloquent prose, explores the challenge of how to live even after one has survived."-O: The Oprah Magazine

"Powerful and vividly wrought . . . Nović writes about horrors with an elegant understatement. In cool, accomplished sentences, we are met with the gravity, brutality and even the mundaneness of war and loss as well as the enduring capacity to live."-San Francisco Chronicle

"Intimate and immense . . . a writer whose own gravity and talent anchor this novel."-The New York Times

"An important and profoundly moving reading experience."-The National

"Remarkable."-Julia Glass, The Boston Globe

"[A] powerful, gorgeous debut novel."-Adam Johnson, The Week

"An unforgettable portrait of how war forever changes the life of the individual . . . a writer working with deep reserves of talent, heart, and mind."-Gary Shteyngart, author of Super Sad True Love Story

From the Hardcover edition.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateMay 12, 2015
ISBN9781101914120
Unavailable
Girl at War: A Novel

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Reviews for Girl at War

Rating: 4.146694347107438 out of 5 stars
4/5

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The last book I'll read this year, and it's my favorite of 2015. The author went back in forth in time throughout the book. She did it seamlessly. I was immediately drawn into the story. It was emotional to watch Ana go from a little girl playing like a tomboy to going through war. Girl at War is the perfect book for book clubs and for those that enjoy historical fiction.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I admit this novel came across my radar as to-read because I learned that author Sara Novic is Deaf, as I am (but of course we have different life experiences). That fact about her is really just an aside. I knew before reading that none of the characters in this book were D/deaf, by the way. This is an excellent novel that is informed by the fact that the author is Croatian-American. I was absorbed by the story of Ana, whose life as she knows it ends after the civil war in Yugoslavia begins, and how the young-adult Ana deals with the present, and especially her past, after being adopted by a family in America. As would be expected with a novel that deals with war, there are heart-wrenching moments and struggles, but it's kept in balance with hope and Ana's strong will.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Girl at War This is an enlightening story about what it can be like to grow up in a civil war and then to escape to another country that was mostly dissociated with it. Or be forced out, depending on how you look at that part of it but I don't want to spoil anything either.While parts of the story can be a bit explicit, I wouldn't call it any more graphic or triggering than the Hunger Games. That said, I can't say for sure what would trigger someone who has lived through such events, so I'll gladly change this if someone disagrees.
    As stated in the synopsis, the story follows Ana Juric. It's a bit of a coming of age story and I personally liked the time jumps. For me, the most striking thing about the story was the way social protocol in the US silenced Ana about her experience. I've seen this pan out similarly with my mother, who lived in Cuba for a while in her childhood. She doesn't talk about it much but will sometimes with the right opening. She's always felt that people don't really want to hear about any of it, like anyone would only were ask to be polite but really preferred she not mention it, which couldn't be further from the truth for some of the family.
    To me, it was fascinating to hear about it. Then again, that puts one in the other bind that we get to see Ana go through as well. She fights off being disaster or tragedy porn and one of the easiest ways to do that is to simply not tell people that you were a part of whatever the disaster is. But the story is really about her realization that she can't ignore what she was a part of just because she doesn't live in that world anymore. It's about reconciling her past and her present and maybe figuring out where that leaves her to go in the future.
    Many parts of her story are those that we hear of here when we do talk to refugees and immigrants who come from war-torn places, but I didn't feel like it was wholely stereotyped. The writing is what makes the difference. Much of it reads a little like a young adult book, but I think that's mostly because it's told in the first person perspective of a new adult who is remembering her past. I like that perspective choice because it relates a deeper understanding of the thought process of a person in those situations as they carry out whatever actions they do. The movement in time help in the endeavor to give both her perspective as she's doing things and the way she feels about it later.
    Honestly, the only thing I didn't really like about the story was that I felt like the end of the book snuck up on me. I didn't feel like there was a specific climax and it felt unresolved. Though I didn't like that as an ending for a book, I understand it's beauty as an ending. That happens sometimes where the perfect ending isn't a particularly satisfying one.
    That didn't ruin the book and I'd still recommend it to anyone who enjoys historical fiction or books with female protagonists or diverse reading.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The thing about books like this is that the stories need to be told. It is so very important for readers to be introduced to tragic situations that are unfamiliar to them and this book, being about life in Zagreb during war in Croatia, is one of those important ones. It is also so very well written that I couldn't put it down.There is a bit of a coming of age feel to this, though it is a novel about war and the physical and emotional toll that it causes on the lives of everyone it touches. I took special notice when the main character grew up and lived her "adult" life in the states, where she tries to fit in as if nothing has happened to her. She doesn't talk about the events in her life and all of the emotion that goes with that really made her character seem tangible and three dimensional to me. It wasn't just a girl with a sad past wandering around saying poor me, it was someone concerned for how she would be treated once people knew the truth.The book is beautifully written, just skimming through other reviews takes me easily back to a moment in the book that I can vividly picture in my mind, as if I had been standing beside the characters, experiencing it myself. Stories that make your mind believe you lived them are rare indeed. This one was longlisted for the Baileys Prize for Women's Fiction, which is how I found it, but it has other awards to brag of, though there aren't enough of them, in my opinion.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    This title caught my eye in a recent browse through the stacks at my library. It is described by Robert D. Kaplan, (who I feel should know better, despite his own shortcomings) as "Intimate, crushingly brutal, and beautiful". It's none of those things. It promises "an unforgettable portrait of how war forever changes the life of the individual". The author has a talent for language, but I don't believe she has any understanding of how war changes people, or she could not have written this lightweight treatment of its effect on a 10-year-old Croatian girl who survived a mass execution by following her father's last second instruction to fall into the pit with him and play dead. Nović told a story that should have torn the heart out of a marble statue, in easy to read prose that skips right along, and never touched my own beating pump organ. I could pick it apart in more detail, but there really isn't any point. I should have read a couple of the reviews on site and given it a pass.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Second book about Croatia that I managed to read this year. It has dark undertones, as opposite to the sunny and relaxing vibes in The Secret Cove in Croatia.
    It's about the experience of a Croatian girl during the (former) Yugoslavian Civil War in the 90s.
    Will write more after I finish another book about Croatia in 2021.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    A gripping novel about the Serbo-Croat war of 1991 and about being caught between cultures. A terrific, wrenching, and very well-written novel.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I happened to visit Dubrovnik about five years after the war in the Balkans ended. My most enduring memory, all these years later, is walking along the walls and seeing all the bright orange roof tile. I was told by a local resident that anything that was bright orange was a replacement for a roof that destroyed during the war while the duller, brown ones (which were very few in number) were the places that somehow managed to survive. I have no way of really knowing the truth of that statement, but Dubrovnik remains one of the most hauntingly beautiful places I've been able to visit. The same could be said of Sara Novic's novel "Girl at War" -- which is the story of Ana, a Croatian girl who was 10 when war came to Zagreb and what she needed to do to somehow manage to survive (both the war and beyond.) The novel is beautiful, engrossing and haunting with an incredible ring of truth to it. I'm definitely glad I finally had a chance to read it.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Great story. Love historical fiction, even when it's not that old.
    Sad, brutal, but truth about the civil war in Yugoslavia- through the eyes of a 10 year old - and the same girl in her 20s as she heads back to her home.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I put my elbows on the counter to get the clerk’s attention. Mr. Petrović knew me and knew what I wanted, but today his smile looked more like a smirk. “Do you want Serbian cigarettes or Croatian ones?” The way he stressed the two nationalities sounded unnatural. I had heard people on the news talking about Serbs and Croats this way because of the fighting in the villages, but no one had ever said anything to me directly. And I didn’t want to buy the wrong kind of cigarettes. “Can I have the ones I always get, please?” “Serbian or Croatian?” “You know. The gold wrapper?” I tried to see around his bulk, pointing to the shelf behind him. But he just laughed and waved to another customer, who sneered at me. “Hey!” I tried to get the clerk’s attention back. He ignored me and made change for the next man in line. I’d already lost the game, but I ran home as fast as I could anyway. “Mr. Petrović wanted me to pick Serbian or Croatian cigarettes,” I told Petar. “I didn’t know the answer and he wouldn’t give me any. I’m sorry.”

    This book excels at telling of how Yugoslavia was killed in the 1990s, in a lot of subtle ways. As my father is from Yugoslavia, and the high school that I attended in the mid-1990s went on, I learned how Serbs "were" different from Croats, Bosnians, et cetera, and "why". A lot of bullshit went on, and a lot of friendships were uprooted and destroyed.

    Nović is very good at noting the little things, as well as the big picture. I knew nothing of her life before reading this book, and appx. 30% in, I was really shocked. It opened my eyes to what some people may feel where PTSD and war is concerned - but there's naturally no way I would ever really know this.

    In school we’d been taught to ignore distinguishing ethnic factors, though it was easy enough to discern someone’s ancestry by their last name. Instead we were trained to regurgitate pan-Slavic slogans: “Bratstvo i Jedinstvo!” Brotherhood and Unity. But now it seemed the differences between us might be important after all. Luka’s family was originally from Bosnia, a mixed state, a confusing third category. Serbs wrote in Cyrillic and Croats in the Latin alphabet, but in Bosnia they used both, the spoken differences even more minute. I wondered if there was a special brand of Bosnian cigarettes, too, and whether Luka’s father smoked those.

    It's not hard to draw parallels between WW2, the USA and the Yugoslav war:

    Our class got two boys who looked close enough to our age to blend in. They were from Vukovar and spoke with funny accents. Vukovar was a small city a few hours away and had never meant much to me during peacetime, but now it was always in the news. In Vukovar people were disappearing. People were being forced at gunpoint to march east; people were becoming hemic vapor amid the nighttime explosions. The boys had walked all the way to Zagreb and they didn’t like to talk about it. Even after they settled in they were always a little dirtier, the circles beneath their eyes a little darker than ours, and we treated them with a distant curiosity.

    There's a lot of pitch-black humor in here, which is inherently Yugo:

    As a side effect of modern warfare, we had the peculiar privilege of watching the destruction of our country on television.

    ...and the constant threat crept closer:

    After the bombing of the palace, Croatia had officially declared independence, inciting a flurry of modifications that called even the most mundane detail of our former lives into question. Pop singers famous across Yugoslavia recorded dual versions of their hits in both dialects; seemingly innocuous words like coffee had to be replaced with kava and kafa for Croatian and Serbian audiences. Even one’s greeting habits could be analyzed—a kiss on each cheek for hello was acceptable, three kisses too many, a custom in the Orthodox Church and therefore traitorous.

    “They’re killing them,” the man said. “Who?” said my father, studying the paper for clues. “Everyone.” “Would you like some soup?” said my mother.

    As Nović lives in the USA, she writes about the international connotations:

    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.

    I shan't say more about the book, as there would be spoilers, so to speak. This book has much depth and breadth, and ties in with Nović's current and "former" life. Don't miss this.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    We meet Ana Juric as a ten year old Crotian girl living the life like any other child. The Bosnian War starts and very slowly creeps into her life and then in a flash rips her life apart. From fun loving child to loading guns for the underground and shooting the enemy in cold blood. Then we flash ahead to a college age Ana living in NYC as well adapted New Yorker. A visit back to her roots provides us flashbacks to her survival after her tragedies. Sara Novic draws you in, makes you feel like your right there with Ana through it all and gives us a glimpse of how a war impacts the citizens. I say glimpse because I don't believe anything one can read ever prepare them for the reality of living through war. Sara Novic's book makes that very clear.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Girl At War by Sara Novic'Random House; 2015 10 year old Ana Juric' and her family live in Zagreb, Yugoslavia during the 1990s civil war. Ana's younger sister, Rahela, is sick and after many attempts at making her well, the family at last takes her to Ljubljana to seek treatment at the Mission Doctor's. In desperate fear of Rahela's life they agree to send her to America for treatment. Returning home to Zagreb, young Ana with her parents in the car, suddenly life is forever altered. "Girl At War" by Sara Novic' is a stunning account of a young girl's life struggles during the civil war. At a time in life when America's young are excitingly preparing for grad and driving lessons, Ana spent living with air raids, sniper fire and worse - just struggling to stay alive. Sara Novic's novel will leave you stunned at the traumas young Ana survives, and amazed at the girl's courage. What a fantastic read!! I received this Ebook for free to review. I am a member of Goodreads, Librarything, NetGalley, Klout and the Penguin book club. I also maintain a book blog at dbettenson.wordpress.com.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Ana is ten when the break-up of Yugoslavia reaches her and her family in Zagreb. Life, which had been spartan, but full of the life of a child of ten, becomes harder and more dangerous. Time is spent in basement bomb shelters and the playground has shifted from the town square, now full of refugees, to the stacks of sandbags and getting to pedal the bicycle that powers the generator in the bomb shelter nearest Ana's school. Meanwhile, her little sister is getting sicker. Years later, Ana, now a university student in New York City, is asked to speak to a group at the UN about her experiences in Bosnia. The event triggers her memories, and leads her to decide to return to Bosnia to find family friends.This is an impossible book to rate. On the one hand, the subject matter is important and necessary. On the other, the writing just doesn't serve the story. It has the feel of an eyewitness account written, not by a writer, but by a survivor, with little care for style or pacing. Novic is an American of Bosnian descent. She's not writing from personal experience, but from her research and from conversations she had while visiting Bosnia. Maybe the writing style was a deliberate choice to make the book appear as though it was a first-hand account. But the wooden style distanced me from the main character and pulled its punches at the critical moments. I'm glad this book exists and that I read it, but I wish it had been a better book.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Scattered thoughts for now...Vivid, intense, heartbreaking.So, so much grief for such a young person. Young people, really.Loved all the characters; they were drawn with such sympathy for each other. Ana's arc was especially breathtaking; I found out more about her on every page. And at the end of the book, I still feel that I do not know her, because she has gone through so much - brutality, displacement, death, is still going through it, and will be going through it long after the last page. I thought the portrayal of these repercussions of war was beautifully, beautifully done.Going to read more about the Balkans now, and hopefully get my hands on a copy of Black Lamb and Grey Falcon.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Very touching book. Reaches out and slaps you in the face in many parts. I worked with a refugee from Croatia and learned her story which moved me much like this book and in many ways was just as devestating. I realize how great we have it in our insulated US bickering about carrying guns into BW3'S and Berger King getting our orders wrong. It is a good thing to understand what a high price people pay for their freedoms.Excellent book. Hard to read in places (which I tend to not read after getting the gist).
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    The basics: In 1991, Ana is living a typical ten-year-old's life in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, when the Yugoslavian war breaks out. My thoughts: I'm about the same age as Ana, so I was immediately drawn into her story. As a ten-year-old, she doesn't understand what's happening, and as a reader, neither did I. I've heard of the war, but my knowledge of it was slim at best. While coming of age stories set against a war backdrop are hardly new, Novic takes Ana's story in unexpected directions.We enter the story in 1991, but the story is told in several nonlinear parts. The action next jumps to New York City in 2001, where Ana is in college. Novic skillfully moves locations and times in a way that enhance the story, both emotionally and in structurally. Again, I could have been one of Ana's peers in college at that time. I wouldn't have known what country Zagreb was in or the significance of what it meant to be Zagreb. Watching Ana negotiate these social and educational situations was fascinating. She's such a complicated, smart, and flawed character, and I loved spending time in her worlds.Audiobook thoughts: Julia Whelan's narration was extraordinary. She featured different accents for different characters, which helped bring the Croatian sections to life even more vividly for me. The performance was so well done I had to remind myself it wasn't done with multiple narrators. After listening to it, I came across this essay Novic wrote about what it's like to be a deaf novelist and not be able to experience the audiobook version of your book. It's fascinating!The verdict: Every so often I read a novel so good that has me gushing with cliched superlatives like haunting and lyrical. Girl at War is indeed a haunting, lyrical novel. It's also smart and beautiful. It's a window into a place and a time I was embarrassingly ignorant about, but it's also a deft depiction of a fascinating character who is both heroine and anti-heroine, extraordinary and ordinary. This novel is one of the best I've read this year, and I hope it becomes a modern classic. It's a novel that reminds me why I so love fiction--it can educate, connect, and remind me of the vastness of our shared humanity.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Girl at War tells the story of 10 year old Ana's experiences during the war between Croatia and Serbia and then the 21 year old Ana's attempts to wrestle with and process these experiences. This is a hard book to assess - the sections set during the war are breathless, dreadful and so tense that you can't drag your eyes away, even as you wish you could stop certain scenes from unfolding. I found the rest of the book more mixed - it moves more slowly, and the focus is more on identity, belonging and memory. Parts were haunting, but some sections felt a bit awkward. I wasn't entirely convinced by Ana's return to Croatia - particularly the section in Zagreb, but her struggles to figure out where she belongs and what her terrible experiences mean are deftly described.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Maybe it was so good because it reminds a person of an earlier war when it was hard to pick the good and bad guys. When people were caught up in conflict and no one knew what to do. Anything that was done did not seem to work. It is a tale of today. In a year or so another girl will write a similar book about todays wars. The question is will it ever stop.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This book moves back and forth through time, telling the story of Ana Juric. At the tender age of ten she finds herself and her family caught in the middle of the Yugoslavian Civil War. When she barely escapes death, she finds herself alone, nearly buried in a pit of bodies. The book then jumps forward ten years, depicting Ana as a student in New York. I thought this was a fascinating story. I really felt for Ana as she lost one family and found another in America. I did think the book ended a bit abruptly. I thought the book desperately needed a few more chapters to wrap things up or at least an epilogue. Otherwise, highly recommended.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    3.5 Ana is ten years old and living in Zagreb, Croatia's capitol city with her mother, father and very ill baby sister, when war breaks out. Seeing it as the only way to save her daughter, the family makes a journey that will change Ana and her family's lives in a horrific way and plunge Ana right into the middle of the war.This novel goes back and forth in time, Croatia and America, ten years later when Ana is now a college student. How she arrived here from there is the subject of this novel as is her child self's experiences of war. Her young adult's self trying to come to terms with what she experienced during her short time in loved in the war is both horrific and terrifying. Ana, herself is a most likable character, at least that is how I found her to be. The war, genocide and the huge amounts of people killed were abominable as is all genocide. Ana's character and relationships helped make this bearable. The novel ends in a very hopeful manner and I was very glad of that. An amazingly written first novel about an important part of recent past history.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is a sad story; is there even a story of war which is not sad? Ana whose parents had been killed in front of her is now a college student in NY. After presenting in UN about civil war in Croatia she decides to go back home again....
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    At times this tale of a young girl growing up in the war-torn Balkans is nothing less than heart-wrenching. I won't ruin anything for other readers, but be prepared for the gruesome portrayal of war and the sadness and violence it caused in the main character's life. A good read and I was pleased with the ending, but it was also a book that made me think, especially about the effect of war and the actions of the organizations we entrust keeping the peace to.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    When starting this book, I didn’t expect the experience I had from reading it. Girl at War is a beautifully written, intense, and captivating début novel. If I hadn’t known this was Nović’s début, I’d have assumed there was a backlist to check out. There isn’t, yet, though. This author is just that talented from the start.

    The first person narrative was key to drawing the reader into the experiences of being a child during a war. Ana is trying to have a childhood in a city that’s being bombed from the air. Her family has just enough rationed food to not waste away. And there’s always a lingering knowledge that a loved one might not walk through the door at the end of the day. Along with all of this, Rahela, Ana’s baby sister’s health is a major concern tearing at the family. This is troublesome for any person to live through, but for a ten-year-old, it’s a very impressionable time. Nović portrayal of this child in a war-torn setting had me closing the book every now and then just to absorb it all, knowing that this was the childhood of many kids only a few decades ago, and in places around the world today.

    I also thought that after the initial set-up of Ana’s childhood, jumping to her in her twenties in New York City. Ana’s juggling college, a relationship, and memories of her past effecting her more and more each day. With this and flashback scenes, the reader gets the full scope of Ana’s life journey and her journey to heal, to look for answers, to not forget.

    This book, its setting, its characters, and the gorgeous writing, it will stay with me for a long time. It has been a long time since a book has had an effect on me like Girl at War has. It may have ruined me for whatever book I read next. And I’m ok with that.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I liked this book. The story was interesting and I really felt sympaphy for the main character Anà. After a war as violent as the croatia/serbia war, there are many casualties dead and alive. I often wondered how the survivors coped with the atrocities that happened. I felt this book ended too soon, there was more to tell but the author decided to stop when Anà returns to Croatia to visit friends and family still living there. A sequel perhaps?
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    “Luka, I killed a man. Maybe more than one—who knows what happened when I was just shooting out the window. I could have hit someone else.”

    “You were defending yourself.”

    “I’m no better than any of them.”

    “You were a little kid. You didn’t even know what you were doing.”

    “No, that’s the thing. When I was shooting—when I shot that guy—I liked it. I knew it was bad and I liked it. I wasn’t sorry.”


    * * *

    This is a beautifully written debut novel. It has flowing prose, rich characters, and a vivid storyline with a point of view that’s slightly removed so it’s not too sentimental. Sara Novic’s storytelling allows the reader to experience the tragedy of the war and the emotions it evokes without feeling overwhelmed by it.

    This is a story told in the point of view of Ana as a 10 year old living in Zagreb, Croatia in 1991 before and during the Yugoslavian Civil War and as a 20 year old college student living in NY in 2001 during the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The story goes back and forth in time, but it’s very effectively done adding another layer of suspense.

    In this story, you’ll experience Ana’s naiveté before the war, the tragic events during the war, the harsh living conditions in Croatia and the shocking things Ana has to do just to survive. Ana runs to bomb shelters during air raid drills, she shoots an AK-47 and learns how to avoid landmines. Ana courageously escapes Croatia to America and ten years later as a college student, she’s still haunted by her past, but continues to push back her feelings to try to remain numb. Her past continues to affect her life, especially her relationships. As an adult, Ana feels stuck, unable to go back or move forward in her life and eventually she learns that she must face what she’s been avoiding for ten years.

    After living in Croatia for ten years and America for ten years, she still feels lost and doesn’t know where she belongs:

    “I want to go home,” I said, all too aware I had no idea where that might be.

    There was never enough to eat in Croatia due to the food rations. She continues to have issues with food in her adulthood:

    “People’s use of the word starving when they obviously were not had always bothered me, but it was especially irritating at college, where every night was a buffet of excess. I thought of the piles of roast chicken and potato salad and fluorescent yellow corn bread the school was likely serving for Sunday dinner, then throwing away.”

    Her adoptive mother Laura takes her to her first physical where Ana learns the full effects of the food deprivation she experienced for years:

    “In Croatia I had been a normal-size fifth grader. In America I was skinny. When I went for the my first physical, I didn’t hit the minimum on the growth charts for weight and height.”

    After the physical, Laura has to start giving Ana nutritional milkshakes, which makes Ana ill and she tells Laura how she feels about it:

    “I told her feeling full was awful and I never wanted to do it again. I panicked and threw up every night for the rest of the week.”

    While in college, she gives a speech to the UN about her experience during the civil war. Part of her speech was a wake-up call, not only for the UN, but for me as well:

    “’You should know that your food aid does not reach the people it’s supposed to,’ I said. ‘In the place where I stayed, there were no Peacekeepers, and the Cetniks stole the aid meant for civilians. If you drop the food and leave, you’re just feeding your enemy. We had guns, but they had more. Firepower is the only thing that determines who eats.”

    My heart dropped when I read her speech because I felt so helpless. I often wonder who is actually benefiting from our supplies when we help other countries in need, especially in these hostile environments and Ana’s speech confirmed my suspicions. It’s heartbreaking to learn that all of our help as a nation isn’t really helping.

    I was fascinated by Ana’s interpretations of Americans’ views when she occasionally revealed fragments of her past. Although her city was volatile, she still viewed it as home and most Americans were in awe that she could still love and want to live in that environment. She reminds us of the sheltered lives we live in the U.S. and our lack of true understanding of those who have lived as she has. When we hear stories from those who have experienced tragedies similar to Ana’s, we pretend to sympathize, but how can we when we’ve never walked a mile in their shoes?

    Ana returns to Croatia in search of answers and peace. The ending is perfect, but I was sad that it ended. It’s one of those novels that lingers in your mind well after the story ends.

    You don’t have to love historical fiction to love this book. It’s ideal for readers who don’t need a positive experience or a happy storyline in order to enjoy a novel. I can see this book becoming a bestseller.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Typically I would not choose to read a coming of age story, however there are usually some exceptions to my genre preferences and Sara Nović‘s Girl at War is the exception. Due to be released 12 May 2015, I highly recommend this book be added to readers’ lists. Nović’s writing is richly detailed, atmospheric, intense, and exceptionally beautiful, especially considering some of the subject matter. The reader is taken to Zagreb in the summer of 1991 and in introduced to 10-year-old Ana Juric, her family, and her best friend Luka. Soon civil war breaks out across Yugoslavia and Ana is not spared from bearing witness to unspeakable horrors and tragedies, finding the strength to do what it takes to survive and find her way to New York where she must try to adapt from a child who has witnessed far more that what most people could imagine to being a “typical” American student. Ana’s past is constantly with her, this is most evident when she speaks to her American friends, for whom she alters what she says about her childhood and her home. Finally Ana makes the decision to return to Croatia to encounter her past in order for her to be able to move forward. Girl At War is a book that is not to be missed; Nović has captured the essence of a girl who came of age in the midst of a civil war, who survived, but at what cost to herself. Highly charged and atmospheric, Nović‘s gentle yet beautiful prose captures the reader from the very beginning and does not let go. I cannot praise this book highly enough and recommend it to all readers.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Girl At War by Sara Novic is the story of a young girl caught up in the Bosnian War. It opens in Zagreb in 1991. Ana Juric is 10 years old and the war has come to her town. This is partly a coming-of-age story, partly a story of war, and partly a story of love and remembrance. In her 10 year old voice we learn of the end of Ana’s childhood and then in her 20 year old voice, after 10 years in America not talking much about her experiences, she returns to Zagreb and is able to finally find inner acceptance and a measure of peace.I found this book quite realistic and had a hard time separating the author, Sara Novic from the narrator, Ana Juric. The emotions felt real, the sense of loss and despair and the overwhelming sadness all rang true. In light of what is happening in the world today, it is obvious mankind never learns that violence over ethnic origins, religion and culture never solves the problem as it only leaves behind more hatred and people that have been impacted by the violence.There are a number of books written from a child’s point of view with a backdrop of war and although Girl At War doesn’t have anything new to add, Ana’s story is heartfelt and engaging and well worth picking up.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    “The war in Zagreb began over a pack of cigarettes.”This first sentence promises interesting things to come, sad things to come. The story of war is told from a first person perspective, first when the protagonist is a young child and then as she ages into adulthood. The story flips back and forth in time, but there is no confusion about the time setting, so the changes worked well for me.Civil war is never civil, and this Yugoslavian war, this war between Croatians and Serbians, is no different. “As a side effect of modern warfare, we had the peculiar privilege of watching the destruction of our country on television.” The bits of too-recent history in the story were informative to someone, like me, who doesn't know enough background of the war.:”...but I knew in the end the guilt of one side did not prove the innocence of the other.”This is a story of children having to grow up too fast, of difficult decisions, of child soldiers. Some of the characters seemed real to me, but some could have used a little more fleshing-out. It is also a story of life in America, what American is like for someone not born here, and quite a bit of the story is set in the United States. I found the Croatian part a little more interesting. The story moved at a good pace, and did keep my interest thoughout.This is a well written book, worth reading, but not truly set apart from other similar stories.I was given an advance reader's copy of this book for review, and the quotes may have changed in the published edition.