Salvation and Other Disasters

William J. Cobb

Novakovich provides remarkable insight into the nature of public deception and private honesty....It's a pleasure to encounter his short stories. -- New York Times Book Review

From The Critics

In this deeply ironic and dark collection of stories, award-winning Croatian-born Novakovich explores the personal side of the politically charged existence of inhabitants of the former Yugoslavia. Not surprisingly, war and its damaging legacy powerfully assert their influence on Novakovich's characters as they desperately struggle to create normal lives in a world wracked by chaos.
With spare and startlingly direct prose, Novakovich unfolds stories of a former prisoner of war achieving bloody revenge against his tormentor only to ultimately doubt the identity of his enemy; a couple haunted by the wife's reluctant work as a prostitute as a way to survive during the war; and a marked man who attempts futilely to seek asylum in the U.S.
To great and disturbing effect, Novakovich frequently condenses life-altering events such as marriage, rape and death into a few bleak and fleeting sentences. Thankfully, he also allows for the occasional image of hope, including the almost miraculous recovery of a very sick child, and the giddy anticipation of brothers chilling their first bottles of Coke in the snow.
The collection does falter at times, especially when the author attempts to venture into the absurd. Also, Novakovich's resistance to give full attention to the experience of women in the world he constructs is puzzling. Overall however, Novakovich has powerfully and precisely captured a horrifying reality that might have seemed to defy description.
­Mimi O'Connor

Kirkus Reviews

A varied and absorbing collection of 16 stories by the Croatian-American author of Apricots from Chernobyl (not reviewed) and Yolk (1995).

The influences of Kafka, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Bruno Schulz are traceable throughout Novakovich's unsettling fiction, in which violence and death often lie just beneath ostensibly benign comic surfaces. Many of his protagonists are survivors of "the Balkan wars": specifically, Serbia's Yolk oppression of Croatia. Fritz: A Fable—in which a dog's hatred for a cat deftly allegorizes ethnic and nationalistic enmity, brilliantly updates the beast fable, and there are irresistibly lively pictures of children's ability to thrive in even hostile environments in stories like Ice and the delightfully anecdotal The Devil's Celluloid Tail. A handful set in America memorably limn the immigrant experience (especially The End, which explores, in a densely packed 20 pages, the lingering culture shock endured by a Croatian family). The best of these pieces, which analyze the alienated states of people who regret or cannot make sense of their past allegiances, include Sheepskin, the confession of a war victim who murders the wrong man in what he thinks is an act of justified vengeance, then pursues his victim's widow; Rye Harvest, the tale of an immigrant desperately seeking security who finally reaches the US only to learn he'll be immediately deported; and A Free Fall, which describes with wonderfully mingled humor and pathos the whole arc of its disabled narrator's life, "from sperm to worm."

Novakovich's characters aren't just survivors; they're energetic, hopeful souls whoseappetite for life is best expressed by their exuberant, playful sexuality—for which their author repeatedly finds fresh, amusing metaphors (during sex, a woman "felt as though she were a computer accessory, for him to move his cursor around, or, more likely, a bit of physical to augment his virtual reality").

First-rate fiction, from one of the best short-story writers of the decade.