Pretty Birds

I write my reviews before I read anybody else's. This is the first work, fiction or non-fiction, that I have read about the War in former Yugoslavia. But I feel I have an excellent taste for what the besieged citizens of Sarajevo went through from 1992-1996. The book has made the war very real. The characters in the novel are well developed. The plot was not predictable; you actually think it is going one way and it ends in another. They could probably make a movie out of it, but they would probably ruin its excellence. The story is that if Irena, a teenage Bosnian who escapes with her family from the Serbian controlled side of Sarajevo to the Bosnian side, which is a terror stricken enclave supposedly being protected by the United Nations troops. Pretty Birds refers to Irene and her friends, who get caught up in the war effort in ways they would not have imagined, and it also refers to Pretty Bird, Irena's parrot. The dialogue and depictions are realistic. The characters and moments memorable. The book flows fast and never bores. It does only cover the Bosnian side of the siege of Sarajevo. With a small but important exception. One feels one knows at least a bit of what the besieged residents of Sarajevo endured, and such knowledge makes one's personal problems evaporate into a mist--to use a term from the book. I have heard first-hand anecdotes of what it was like to live in Sarajevo during the war, and the accounts of the book match those.

Books like this one remind us again that no war is a good war for those who are dying, and perhaps about to die. This is the story of a young woman, a teenager, who is trained as a sniper to kill her countrymen who are also trying to kill her. It is the story of many people who are trying to stay alive and not starve during a conflict that has no rational meaning. We are in the divided city of Sarajevo where Serbs are trying to eradicate Muslims. Irena, a Muslim woman and high school athlete becomes a killer who shoots Serbian killers on the other side of the city. The strange thing is that the dialogue of the novel's characters is often terribly funny while the theme of the book is terribly sad. The gallows humor is often interrupted by the injection of a sudden, heart stopping horror. Ultimately the book is one of tragedy that makes one think of the daily lives of ordinary people in Iraq today: people who are also trying to keep alive, trying to find enough to eat, and trying to avoid being shot on the streets or in their homes. This is a war book that deals with the plight of ordinary citizens. It tells of how they adapt to a brutish situation. It also tells how they die, often while doing a small, daily task like standing in line to get a jug filled with water. The events in the book happened 14 years ago, but the things haven't much changed in the world since then. This is an outstanding book. Put it on your required reading list.

The siege of Sarajevo was the longest in the history of modern warfare, and the worst in Europe since the end of WWII. It lasted from April 5, 1992 to February 29, 1996. Irena Zaric is, in many ways, a typical teenager. Irrepressibly energetic, buoyant, funny, loving, she is a star on her high school basketball team, Sarajevo's champions. She wears funky clothes - a gray West German jacket, Esprit jeans, red-and-black Air Jordans, American polo shirts, hecho en Honduras, and sports purple nail polish. Her best friend and teammate, Amela Divacs, blonde and curvaceous, is considered prettier by the local boys, but lithe Irena, with the k .d. lang haircut, is thought to be sexier. She doesn't dwell much on politics, history or culture - she's a jock(!) - there are too many more important things on her mind, like athletics, her friends, acquiring copies of Q Magazine, Madonna, Johnny Depp, Michael Jordan, Princess Di, and the great Croatian player Toni Kukoc. Schoolwork is not a priority, although her teachers are not concerned about her. They know she is intelligent, that her "mind has depth." Of course she loves her parents, brother, (who is in Chicago), and grandmother, but like most teens, she takes them for granted. She adores Pretty Bird, her Timneh African gray parrot, who is an outrageous mimic, able to imitate the sounds of the telephone ringing, the doorbell, the refrigerator opening, the vacuum cleaner, and, best of all, the sound of a basketball hitting the hoop. The war begins suddenly for Irena, on a warm weekend in March. Students march for peace and are shot for their idealism. Serb police take off their uniforms and badges and become the "paramilitaries," clothed in menacing black. They erect barriers and declare the land beyond, Serb Sarajevo. The Bosnian Serbs, supported by neighboring Serbia and Montenegro, respond to Bosnia-Herzegovina's declaration of independence with armed resistance. They aim to partition the republic along ethnic lines and join Serb-held areas to form a "Greater Serbia." The national army is converted into the Bosnian Serb Army, and Irena's family's apartment, the entire Grbavica block of buildings, is appropriated for Bosnian Serb officers. Amela is officially knows as a Serb, Irena a Muslim, although her father recently yelled in outrage, "Half (Serb) isn't half enough for them. Yes, them...don't you see? They want 'purity.' My father was a Serb married to a Jew. I married a Muslim whose mother was a Croat. Serb, Croat, Muslim, Jew - what does that make you and your brother? We have no name. And now we have no place." The family decides to go live with Mrs. Zaric, Irena's grandmother and only living grandparent. She lives on the "other side of the river," in what is considered Muslim territory. "The Miljacka River, which used to tie the city together like a ribbon, now divides it like the edge of a serrated knife." On their way over, bombs falling around them, they are brutally attacked, violated and

This is the first fictionalized account that I have read of the wars of 1991-1995 in the former Yugoslavia. I have consumed nearly every non-fiction work there is on that part of the world and that time period in particular. Much of it is slanted toward one faction or the other, with some seeking to justify the 'self-defence' of the Serbs and others seeking to inspire sympathy for the poor, suffering Bosnians or Croats who were on the receiving end of the violence. While reading any of these accounts, it is best to remember that tomorrow's trip to the bookstore will deliver a completely different perspective....making it hard to know the truth about anything. Fortunately, if only in fiction, Scott Simon has captured the true human tragedy of this little piece of history. I lived and worked in Sarajevo beginning at the end of the war and through the early years of reconstruction. My colleagues lived through the scenes that Mr. Simon describes in such horrendous detail, buried loved ones in soccer fields and ate Spam and weevil-infested grain (when they could get it). They have a lot to teach us about what it means to be a human being. This book will help any reader understand why war....any war....is wrong. Read the book, and think about what you would do in the situations portrayed there. Think about where your soul would be when it was all said and done. Wonder whether you would ever be able to get it back again after witnessing and participating in that kind of mindless animal behavior and purposeful cruelty.

How can a book be at the top of the "early adopter" category but have no customer reviews?!?! I'm not sure why I am so surprised at how good this is. I'm a Scott Simon fan and thought his Home and Away was perfectly fine, but this book is in another league (sorry) altogether. It's totally original, and that's worth at least a star. And quite intricate, although you are not aware of that until the end. I have heard a couple of interviews with him, and he declines to answer any questions regarding the whereabouts or situation of the real-life Irena, which of couse we are most curious to know. I do remember his interviews with her and I hear her voice when reading the book. I borrowed it from the library and don't really want to return it--I read it twice over a weekend. Maybe I'll spring for an autographed copy through NPR. I like to think that this has not been widely reviewed yet.