December 14, 2004
Paul Mandelbaum Recommends
"I just finished reading Josip Novakovich's wonderful novel April Fool's Day," Mandelbaum says. "It chronicles the life of one Ivan Dolinar, a Croatian whose knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time makes him a useful guide to that hauntingly perverse pocket of the world, the Balkans. Spanning fifty-plus recent years, the book naturally devotes some of its attention to war and its horrors (in a particularly chilling scene, Ivan comes across the crucified body of a Muslim friend from medical school), but the novel's main focus is Ivan’s struggle for survival and a meaningful existence. Novakovich’s vision encompasses the broadly philosophical and the minutely sensory; his voice is inviting and compelling, morally alert without being moralistic, and he never loses sight of what makes for a good story."
Paul Mandelbaum is the author of Garrett in Wedlock, part of which appears in the Winter issue of Glimmer Train Stories. He also edited the anthology First Words: Early Writings From Favorite Contemporary Authors, including juvenilia by Margaret Atwood, Rita Dove, Stephen King, Maxine Hong Kingston, John Updike and others.
If you'd like to recommend an underappreciated book for this series, please send mail to llalami at yahoo dot com.
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