Praise for Love Novel
“Sajko takes no prisoners . . . [Love Novel] gloriously marries sociopolitical commentary on failed capitalism in a failed state to the inevitability of failed marriage, locating the narrative in an extraordinary violence of mind and body . . . Matching form with content, it depicts lives that involve walking constantly on tightropes with a ferocity of prose that allows no breathing space, consummately conveying the claustrophobic existence of the characters as external as well as personal circumstances close in on them.”
—Dublin Literary Award Judges’ Citation
"A devastating book, humane, original, and deeply relevant."
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"A work of startling and brass originality. Sajko never shies away from the broken and crass aspects of being in love. But within this writing, moments of grace and absolute beauty shine through. Moments as exquisite as the first falling snowflakes that stop you in your tracks."—Heather O'Neill, author of When We Lost Our Heads
"[Sajko’s] sentences mimic how, in the heat of argument, thoughts converge, events conflate, and emotions surge until one forgets where it all began . . ."
—Literary Review of Canada
“Love Novel is not a comfortable read, but it is a timely exploration of socio-economic inequality, a raw confrontation of the pain humans are capable of inflicting on one another, and a fearless engagement with the challenges of poverty and parenthood.”
—Helen Vassallo, Reading in Translation
"Sajko’s taut, innovative writing has a pounding tempo; she unleashes a stream of consciousness that combines all the hopes, regrets and resentments competing in the minds of her characters . . . Every word has been chosen carefully."
—Harriet Zaidman, Winnipeg Free Press
"A necessary read . . . brief yet intricate, raw but profoundly touching."
—Anne Smith-Nochasak, The Miramichi Reader
“A sharp and claustrophobic portrait of a fraying marriage . . . Sajko never takes her foot off the gas in this potent and incendiary outing.”
—Publisher's Weekly
"Love Novel is a universal story about passion and poverty that’s told in rich language."
—Suzanne Kamata, Foreword Reviews
"In its depiction of a contemporary relationship submitted to the meatgrinder of contemporary demands and expectations, Love Novel is unafraid and unsparing in its honesty."
—Andrew Hood, Bookshelf.ca
“The interpersonal magic now lost, or at least forgotten, but above all: poisoned by the big bad world ‘out there.’ Ivana Sajko celebrates this sad state of affairs with power and intensity.”
—NDR Kultur
“Breathless, barely punctuated. Her heroes: a nameless couple in a Mediterranean nowhere, devoted to each other in hate. A tough, great novel.”
—Neue Presse
“A brilliant novel: intense and poetic, exhilarating and devastating.”
—Priya Basil, author of Ishq and Mushq
★ 2023-12-06
In this short novel by award-winning Croatian writer and theater director Sajko, a young couple struggles with parenthood, unemployment, and the anxieties of the historical moment.
In an urban apartment complex, a husband and wife are fighting again. He’s an unemployed writer and Dante fan, trying to protest government corruption. She’s an actress, now home with the baby. “Words, words, words,” he screams. She slams a door, waking the child. “There was no one to turn to for help, for support, for some understanding or a grain of optimism, because like they said on the news, and like he always claimed too, it will only get worse…” She’s right. Things do get worse. Yet out of this unlikely material, Sajko conjures a brutally honest, richly layered story about the fate of those caught in the inequalities of late capitalism and the inertia of governments. We see the actress “on the verge of a nervous breakdown while she was scraping burnt milk off the bottom of a pot, with the pee-soaked child trying to climb her leg, while she was begging the baby to wait, to wait for just one second, all the while trying with enormous difficulty to refrain from screaming or breaking something, because the child was bawling angrily and slapping at her thigh with tiny hands, demanding the right that every child should be able to claim, not to have to wait, just as he demanded the right that every man should be able to claim to pursue goals more noble than washing the dishes and wiping up urine.” Moving deftly between past and present, with evocative sentences that unspool propulsively, Sajko delves into her characters’ souls, and the title that seemed initially facetious becomes increasingly apt. Her compassionate attention extends beyond the unhappy couple to a neighbor attempting to grow flowers, a security guard, protestors at a political rally. And the child, absorbing this miasma of vituperation and crushed hopes.
A devastating book, humane, original, and deeply relevant.