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BLACK BUTTERFLIES

by Priscilla Morris ‧ RELEASE DATE: Aug. 20, 2024

A classic cautionary tale of contemporary relevance.

The human costs of the siege of Sarajevo in the 1990s are recounted in a compelling debut.

Zora, a 55-year-old painter and art instructor, lives a busy life in Sarajevo with her older husband, Franjo. When, during the early days of the partisan conflict, the family’s equanimity is upset by squatters trying to take possession of Zora’s mother’s apartment, Zora and Franjo decide that he will accompany her mother on an earlier-than-planned visit to their daughter and son-in-law (and beloved granddaughter) in England. Unable to believe or comprehend that the military action beginning to envelope the city will last for very long, Zora stays behind to watch the family’s properties and continue her work. Over the course of the following year, Zora struggles to survive as battling factions fight for control of a city that had previously been marked by the calm cohabitation of residents of various nationalities and religions. As residents of her apartment building band together in mutual support after the city loses telephone, electric, and water services, Zora resorts to desperate means to survive the quickly developing brutal circumstances. Faced with no way to escape the freezing weather, dwindling food supplies, and the constant danger of bombardment, Zora finds her lifelong artistic endeavors curtailed. Based on two episodes in her family’s history during the siege, Morris’ account of finding strength in human connection and artistic creation illustrates the cultural, social, and human damage caused by the internecine Balkan conflict. The chronicle of Zora’s ordeal, while sobering, contains episodes of page-turning uncertainty and heartbreaking pathos.

Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2024

ISBN: 9780593801857

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Knopf

Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2024

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2024

LITERARY FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION | GENERAL FICTION

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New York Times Bestseller

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 6, 2024

A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.

A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.

When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.

Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024

ISBN: 9781250178633

Page Count: 480

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023

FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP | GENERAL FICTION | HISTORICAL FICTION

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THE NIGHTINGALE

by Kristin Hannah ‧ RELEASE DATE: Feb. 3, 2015

Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.

Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.

In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs : people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.

Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015

ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3

Page Count: 448

Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014

HISTORICAL FICTION | FAMILY LIFE & FRIENDSHIP

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Women’s Prize shortlist review #2- “Black Butterflies” by Priscilla Morris

My second book review from the Women’s Prize shortlist. Fire Rush set the bar high, but Black Butterflies is a cracker too! It’s the debut novel by Priscilla Morris and has garnered a lot of attention, being shortlisted for a number of prizes. Morris draws on her part-Yugoslav heritage for the subject matter of this novel and her intimate knowledge of Sarajevo and her feeling for the people of that city shine through.

Set in 1992, at the time of the outbreak of the Balkan wars and in particular the devastating siege of the city of Sarajevo, the war is seen through the eyes of Zora Kovovic, an artist of Serb origin who teaches at the university and lives with her Bosnian journalist husband. Their daughter lives in England with her English husband and child, and Zora’s mother lives alone in a flat nearby.

The novel opens with Zora visiting her mother’s flat only to find that a coarse and rather frightening Bosnian family has moved in following the passage of a law that entitles them to occupy empty properties. Zora’s mother has been staying with her over the winter, recovering from illness. The sense of impending doom is clear, everything is about to change. Zora and Franjo, Zora’s husband, who is somewhat older than her, decide that he should leave Sarajevo and take her mother with him, for the safety of England. Zora says she will follow later, she feels a duty to her students and wants to keep an eye on both her mother’s and their own apartments, fearing that they will be taken over otherwise. She does not feel in any danger. She believes that the life they have in cosmopolitan, artistic Sarajevo, which feels like the Paris of the Balkans, could not possibly be under threat.

Franjo and Zora’s mother leave and the situation in the city rapidly deteriorates as war between the ethnic groups in the former Yugoslavia escalates. Very quickly, bombs begin to drop, snipers in the hills surrounding the city,target its inhabitants and many are killed simply going about their daily business. Bodies begin to appear in the streets. The siege intensifies, there are power outages, food becomes scarce and eventually essential services are cut off – water, sewage, power and telephone lines. It very quickly becomes impossible for Zora to escape.

Spoiler alert:

The novel follows the siege for a year, recounting in vivid detail the suffering of the people who chose to remain in the city. What is hardest for Zora is the loneliness. Without Franjo and her mother and no possibility of contacting them or her daughter, Zora is completely isolated. Her mental state is reflected in her art. When she is prevented from working at the university, she withdraws to her studio to paint obsessively, but when the building where her studio is housed burns down and she loses almost all her work, it is like she has been robbed of her very soul. This theme pervades the novel and is not only a powerful metaphor for Zora’s individual suffering, but also a measure of the cultured and refined nature of the community, contrasting with the crudeness and brutality of the soldiers who become the masters of the frightened city-dwellers.

Zora’s apartment is in a small block and she and the other residents who elected to remain develop a powerful bond. They often share what little food they have, and find comfort in one another’s company. It feels like the only thing keeping them sane. Zora eventually escapes Sarajevo, with the help of her son-in-law, who manages to secure a press pass and counterfeit papers to get her out, but though she wants to be reunited with her family, she finds it difficult to leave her fellow Sarajevans and part of her wants to stay. The siege has changed her, changed all of them and they will never be the same again after the experiences they have shared. There is the sense that her loved ones will never truly be able to understand her ever again.

This is a really powerful novel, which I loved, but which is absolutely heartbreaking at the same time. As a senseless war on the eastern side of the European continent rages once more, this reminder of the horrors of the Balkan war and the break up of the former Yugoslavia (indeed, tensions in that area seem to be re-emerging), we get a glimpse of what life is like for the innocent bystanders in times of war. Again, I listened to this on audio and it is skilfully narrated by Rachel Atkins.