Little Bastards in Springtime by Katja Rudolph

Abstract

Jim’s long-ago gift, Steinbeck’s The Moon Is Down (whose unnamed village resists “occupiers ,” evoking Norway during World War II), as an emblem of Jim and freedom. Their initial encounter contrasts the men’s psychic and socioeconomic conditions. Excited to see Jim, Tommy recognizes the badly worn jacket that when new signified Jim’s exotic hero status. But now Jim lives austerely, refusing to seek employment after his year’s medical leave (for panic attacks and undiagnosed pains) from his position as head librarian. Tommy, meanwhile, developed Jonsen’s work ethic, prospering in high finance. But he finds no joy in his many “things,” and his unexpectedly fine clothes and car sharpen Jim’s sense of failure. The text eventually reveals what ended their friendship. At twenty, Jim, like Conrad ’s Lord Jim, longed to be “worthy.” Instead, in a moment of fear, he endangers Tommy. His sense of failure and harsh selfjudgment , despite his friend’s supportive stance, lead him to attempted suicide, hospitalization , and paranoia: he imagines that Tommy means to poison him. Thereafter, Jim’s mother moves them away. A haunting beauty suffuses this spare, nuanced text whose final sections, “The Last Night,” portray two forms of refusal. Both men have embraced negation, filling their voids with drink and nameless women. Jim has the last word, following the “narrow, slippery rope from childhood” to fulfill his self-pronounced sentence. But in the penultimate chapters, Tommy bonds with Berit, the girl behind a café counter, stagnant in her deadly marriage. About to seek the doomed Jim again, Tommy feels Berit’s “sensational, warm, living breath”: “I have a girlfriend now. . . . life is different now.” Refusing “dead ends,” they embrace Lawrence’s “thirst,” daring to forge real connection. Michele Levy North Carolina A&T University Katja Rudolph. Little Bastards in Springtime. Hanover, New Hampshire. Steerforth Press. 2015. isbn 9781586422332. Katja Rudolph’s Evergreen Award–nominated first novel follows the Serb-Croat Andric family—journalist father, pianist mother, teenage son, six-year-old twin daughters, and younger son, Jevrem, eleven—as the siege of Sarajevo destroys their happy lives, forcing them to flee to Toronto. Exploring how violence and diaspora shape youths who fight the status quo with their own misguided violence, Bastards promises a new thread in Balkan literature. But despite many lyrical passages, a solid plot framework , and historical accuracy, this ambitious novel reflects some unfortunate choices that diminish its power. First, too-familiar tropes proliferate, for example Sarajevo as multiethnic paradise, music as resistance, grotesquely injured children, raping Serbs, disaffected youths, clueless westerners, and hippie sages. This distances the reader from Rudolph’s fictional universe, which lacks the singular images and nuanced stylistics of, say, Shards (Prcic), How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone (Stanišić), or The Question of Bruno (Hemon). Further, pacing is uneven. Section 1, the most effective, slowly constructs the rich lives of Jevrem’s family until the siege impels the narrative forward, while section 3, showcasing Jevrem’s escape from the juvenile prison and the transcontinental road trip that follows , moves quickly toward its dénouement. Section 2, the longest, slows to a crawl, lingering on Jevrem’s angst and the repetitive escapades of his disaffected, multiethnic “bastards,” teenaged Bosnian transplants who drink, do drugs, “liberate” goods from haves, and give randomly to have-nots. Although Jevrem narrates this first-person account, issues emerge about speech modes. While its epigraphs urge resistance to “official stories,” the novel itself appears Tomas Espedal Against Nature James Anderson, tr. Seagull Books Tomas Espedal’s writing is wonderfully descriptive, flowing freely from one sentence into another. Such a style is fitting for a novel that seems to glide between thoughts as it questions whether society is natural and what should be done about it. Drawing particular attention to themes of work and love, Espedal’s book invites readers to ponder what is natural in life. Louis-Philippe Dalembert The Other Side of the Sea Robert H. McCormick, tr. University of Virginia Press Dalembert weaves three voices into a single stirring narrative tapestry, revealing a unique look at Haiti’s rich and often troubled history impossible to conceive from foreign shores. The first major novel of Dalembert’s...