My Cat Yugoslavia

CW: sexual assault; violence against an animal

It took me a while to get into this, despite it jumping out at me from the indie bookstore “In Translation” shelf. While it tells the story of a mother and her son in parallel, the stories - their content and tone, and even the lyricism of the writing - are so drastically different from each other that it was jarring at the start, but as the book continues, the storylines seem to veer closer to each other, and you start to understand the layers that make up a family and a life, and all the secrets and hurts and shames and fears within. This is a refugee story, and a story of a spiraling young man whose actions often seem like a cry for help, and a story of war, and patriarchy, and how fast cultural changes and expectations can occur. There is a lot here, and I don't feel like the blurb does it justice.

This is not a book where I felt for the characters; I was a bystander watching this story unfold, and that's okay - I never felt like I needed to be closer. Even though I didn't love it, I'm glad I read it.