Infidelities: Stories of War and Lust

INFIDELITIES: STORIES OF WAR AND LUST is an apt title for not only this book, but for what war does--whether that war is in Bosnia or Croatia, in our own neighborhoods, and even more, in our own hearts. I am reminded through Josip Novakovich's crisp language and haunting landscapes what we all hold in common--what love and lust and longing and sorrow does to us; what it will lead us to do to ourselves and others. I've found through his other books that his stories stay with me, and I find myself contemplating them on some long car ride. He is a master storyteller and these stories are some of his best!

Novakovich is that kind of writer who gets under your skin right from the start. These stories take us to a world poorly understood by most Americans (Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia) and welcome us into the tragedy and struggles facing that world. The marvel of Novakovich's writing is his ability to find humor and immense humanity in this war-torn landscape. And the man, himself, is as engaging as his writing. I'm looking forward to an upcoming story about an encounter on a certain bridge in St. Petersburg:)

The stories in Infidelities entwine the themes of war and lust, showing how people cope with the reality of tragedy by seeking out relationships, however fleeting, passionate or even destructive. Novakovich illustrates this predominantly through the wars dividing the Balkans, as well as through the refugees, Serbs, Croats, and Muslims, coming together in immigrant neighborhoods in the States. One of the most poignant stories in the collection is "59th Parallel," about a man riding the New York City subway in the aftermath of 9/11. Whether the theme be war or merely the tragedy of growing old, each story reins chaos to get to the deepest, lowest, moment of the characters' desiring, wanting to do what's right and failing to, flailing for reason, losing all sense of it, and maybe for just a moment feeling that there's a reason for being. In the story "Tchaikovsky's Bust," a married man is distraught over not pursuing a beautiful woman's advances and discovers contentment in his three-year-old daughter's passion for life. Novakovich infuses each story with new and startling perception and the urgency of lost time, staying true to life when life is marked by transformation which needs to be shared with other people if for no other reason than to look back and laugh. Many of the characters in Infidelities want the unattainable; they want to be free of pain, or worse, painful memories, to feel new, or at least whole again. A heart transplant is the subject of "A Purple Story," in which a man who's low on time tries to bribe his way to the front of a long waiting list. In "Snow Powder," a young boy who becomes chummy with a camp of soldiers is given the chance to get revenge on the kids who tease him. There's an innocence to the protagonists in these stories, a humorous, gentle quality that makes them sympathetic - heightening the suspense. My pulse raced reading "The Stamp." A teenage assassin, a boy, clutching his grenade a second too long, botches his mission and is thrown in prison where he begs for forgiveness. The growing tension and release in Novakovich's writing about war and lust - the moans, the rage, the sweat, and even the silence - blend in a symphony of raw emotion that is powerful enough to cross boarders. In the opening story "Spleen," a Croatian man and woman living in Ohio meet at a barbeque and their courting quickly turns sexual in a war of mixed feelings: the familiarities of home and the painful memories - the possibility that he's the man who attacked her just before she left - makes their casual sex hateful and unnerving and profoundly intense. The stories in Infidelities read like anecdotes you could hear told again and again, laughing harder at what was then and appreciating the truth they impart more every time.

In Infidelities, Josip Novakovich has managed to scrape away the excesses of the English language so that it emerges essential, renewed and more powerful than the language we have become accustomed to reading in American writers. His book is for those who have strayed, even for the briefest moment, from their own parochial comfort. For those who, after a long absence from their culture of origin, have heard their own language spoken by strangers, Novakovich's writing will resonate, perhaps to the point of being their first link back to reality. Finally, for all of us who work with those children of Bosnia who cannot tell their own story, here is a reliable, eloquent voice. Novakovich makes us wonder whether all of our alliances, physical, spiritual and political, are not purely arbitrary. He makes us wonder in whom and in what we will be truly believe when we find ourselves in a life-threatening situation.