Yugoslav by Ana Vučković (review)

I like my superficial and absurd theories of negation of death.

—Ana Vučković

The kids born in the 1980s grew up and started to write, and they actually have something to tell us about themselves and about us. Ana Vučković’s short novel entitled Yugoslavs (alluding both to the personal name “Jugoslav” and also to a citizen of the former Yugoslavia) consists of seventeen chapters, the titles of which in themselves amount to a small lexicon of otherwise commonplace terms that evoke specific memories of growing up in Yugoslavia: banana, Tiger (boots), kimono, car, sandwich, curtain. Even though the title points to Yugoslavness, the novel is, for the most part, a literary attempt at (not) coming to terms with the death of the author’s father, Jugoslav, by cataloguing all those things that also died with him. In that sense, Yugoslav is also an ode to details: “With his death his particular style disappeared, the way he held a fork, the way he giggled, jumped to the sea from a rock, ate ice cream, read books, packed things, made jokes, the way he smelled, the part of the body he soaped first when in the shower” (40–41). It is also an ode to talking: “It seems to me that we ought to say everything to one another because when people keep quiet, those unsaid thoughts depart with them when they die” (15).

In the “temporal vacuum” after her father’s death, the narrator gradually learns to come to terms with his departure. It is a period of uncertainty, “between dream and reality,” and the final acceptance of the “idea of death.” Death is the very first word in the first sentence of this novel. Thus emphasized, death is the final statement, an undeniable fact. However, already in the next sentence, which also starts with the same word, there is an attempt to define death, and by framing it make it less powerful: “Death is when you haven’t seen someone for a long time” (5).

The length of the chapters in this book varies from extremely short, one line only (Death, Coffee), to others that are more than ten pages long (The Plate). The first chapters are spelled out in a discontinuous way, with mournful refrains—“There’s nothing in this picture that’s not dust” (24)—and little details meant to distract from them, like a pop-top that her father put as a ring on her finger, or the sticker on a banana. In the most touching moment of the novel, in the chapter entitled “Closet,” the daughter, in her attempt to bring to life the memory of her father, walks into a closet in which she used to hide as a child: “Once upon a time, when I used to hide in this closet, I would think to myself: find me, find me, find me, but that day, in there, it was I who found him” (41). This entrance into the closet was a symbolic attempt to return to her father’s lap. These moments of mourning are interspersed with irony and humor: “Daddies sometimes cook, and that’s always barbeque or Sunday lunches for kids. It’s always something that kids like, because fathers don’t want to disappoint children, the way moms do every day” (108).

The choked-up narration from the beginning of the novel gradually relaxes in a clearer, sharper, and certainly more directed expression. While still centered around her father, the circle of themes now broadens to include other characters—grandmother, mother, father’s friends, the author’s own generation, the descendants of the Yugoslavs. The most engaging part of the book is in the three central chapters, “Jugoslav,” “Mirjana,” and “The Plate.” In “Jugoslav,” we see the connection with the title of the novel, Jugoslav being the name of an unborn Yugoslav: “[Y]our friend Jugoslav would have been born if his mother hadn’t been killed in bombing ” (51). In “Mirjana,” the...