Make Something Up, The Water Knife and Girl at War

Fight Club's Chuck Palahniuk is back on form

Girl at War

Sara Novic has lived in Croatia and the US. Girl at War is her first novel; it is the story of Ana Juric, who is ten years old and living in Zagreb at the beginning of the Yugoslavian conflict. Ana first becomes aware of the strife about to engulf her family when her Uncle Petar sends her to buy some cigarettes and the vendor asks if she requires the Serbian or Croat variety.

Ana is something of a tomboy and likes nothing better than hanging out with her best friend Luka playing football. As war reports appear on TV and air raids start to hit Zagreb: “War quickly became our favourite game… who could act out the best deaths. If there had been points, players would have been awarded extra for slow motion falls, postmortem twitching or delusional babbling was also a plus, if it wasn’t too dramatic. Those who died with their limbs bent at unnatural angles and could hold their positions the longest were the winners.”

Ana’s baby sister has a kidney condition that necessitates her travelling to the US, so the family take her to be flown out of Sarajevo. On the return journey, Ana and her parents are stopped at a Chetnik roadblock and marched into the forest to be murdered. Only Ana survives due to quick thinking by her father.

Fast forward a decade and Ana is in New York, addressing the UN about the issue of child soldiers. She has been adopted by her sister’s foster parents, is about to complete her college degree but is haunted by the past, so decides to return to Croatia.

We then return to ten year old Ana, who is taken in by a local woman. She learns to strip down a Kalashnikov and when the Yugoslav army arrives, she shoots a man. She eventually returns to Zagreb where her Uncle Petar manages to get her smuggled to the US to join her sister.

Twenty-year-old Ana arrives back in Zagreb and is reunited with Luka who informs her: “It’s not just your shit... you don’t get to claim the war as your own personal tragedy. Not here.”

Ana comes to realise that Luka’s mind “...was a cavernous place I couldn’t navigate.” But she manages to find a degree of solace with fellow victims of war that she was unable to find in the US.

Ana travels with Luka back to the site of the roadblock and the village where she hid, which is now deserted, as well as the site of a massacre where more than seventy people died. The novel ends as the two travel to the Croatian coast where they used to holiday as children, where they find a ghost of a home.

Girl at War is a great debut. In a year that has been strong with first novels, it is as good as any I have read. War, seen through the eyes of a ten-year-old is brilliantly described, from the innocent games at the beginning to the traumatised munitions expert who can load a magazine as fast as UN regular soldiers.

The long term effects of war on the individual are simply, but very effectively written. Sara Novic manages a subtle change in the tone of the narrative between the ten and twenty year old Ana but the story benefits from an almost deadpan, traumatised style which makes Girl at War such a compelling read.

Author Sara Nović
Title Girl at War
Publisher Little Brown
Price £14.99 (Hardback), £13.99 (Paperback), £7.99 (eBook)
More info Publication web site

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