Catch the Rabbit
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4.7 • 3 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
Winner of the 2020 European Union Prize for Literature, Lana Bastašić’s powerful debut novel Catch the Rabbit is an emotionally rich excavation of the complicated friendship between two women in a fractured, post-war Bosnia as they venture into the treacherous terrain of the Balkan wonderlands and their own history.
It’s been twelve years since inseparable childhood friends Lejla and Sara have spoken, but an unexpected phone call thrusts Sara back into a world she left behind, a language she’s buried, and painful memories that rise unbidden to the surface. Lejla’s magnetic pull hasn’t lessened despite the distance between Dublin and Bosnia or the years of silence imposed by a youthful misunderstanding, and Sara finds herself returning home, driven by curiosity and guilt. Embarking on a road trip from Bosnia to Vienna in search of Lejla’s exiled brother Armin, the two travel down the rabbit hole of their shared past and question how they’ve arrived at their present, disparate realities.
As their journey takes them further from their homeland, Sara realizes that she can never truly escape her past or Lejla—the two are intrinsically linked, but perpetually on opposite sides of the looking glass. As they approach their final destination, Sara contends with the chaos of their relationship. Lejla’s conflicting memories of their past, further complicated by the divisions brought on by the dissolution of Yugoslavia during their childhoods, forces Sara to reckon with her own perceived reality. Like Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend, Catch the Rabbit lays bare the intricacies of female friendship and all the ways in which two people can hurt, love, disappoint, and misunderstand one another.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bastašić's EU Prize–winning debut follows a Yugoslav-born woman's stunning Alice in Wonderland–style journey through Bosnia after returning home. Sara is living in Dublin when she gets a pleading phone call from Lejla, her childhood best friend, after 12 years of silence between the two 30-something women. Lejla wants Sara to take her to Vienna to help find her older brother, Armin. Unable to resist Lejla, Sara flies to Zagreb and takes the bus to Mostar, her hometown. Along the way, Sara flashes back to memories of school, birthday parties, and adolescent misadventures with boys. As the magnetic Lejla and Sara grow older, Sara's identity becomes so wrapped up in Lejla's that their personalities feed on each other. In the present, as they travel into desolate regions of Bosnia still bearing scars from the war, Sara, reliving her past, realizes that Lejla has created a "better version of me," while Lejla needs their newfound connection to give her the courage to find her brother—and perhaps herself. Like twin Alices, their wonderland is both terrifying and enlightening, from the white rabbit Sara steals to cement her relationship with Lejla to a deep descent into the catacombs. Sara desperately wants to keep the childhood Lejla she once knew all to herself, but that seems less likely with each new adventure and disturbing realization during the search for Armin. The narrative reaches a greatly satisfying climax, built on themes of rediscovering the past, memories, women's friendships, language, and identity. This unforgettable tour de force surprises at every turn.
Customer Reviews
A Bit Bewildering
Catch the Rabbit certainly was a worthwhile read. It keep my interest throughout but was at times a bit hard to follow. The author made it apparent to her reader that this book was not going to be one to be understood solely by the language and words used. Lejla's distain of words, motives, points all suggest a story in which they aren't what's most important in this book. One has to try to enter Sara's psyche in order to stand a chance of getting her gist. The author uses language beautifully (perhaps the translator should get a nod), and she does a good job of letting us know the protagonist's memory isn’t to be trusted, so how can her words—but isn’t that true of all of us? What a dreary background, the a war, fear, anger and almost always clouds and darkness. So we can feel right to our core that these are bad times. But what is said about language is true, isn’t the failure to understand one another the cause of most wars? No one in this book understands anyone else. Sarah, a literalist and idealist, has unmeetable expectations of those close to her. Leila is perhaps a realist, but I see her primarily as a survivor. Given the book's tone, I guess the ending is befitting, but I’m not sure why Leila planned this trip. It doesn’t make much sense to me. But who am I to judge? I think the author is trying to tell us to try to be more empathetic and less judgmental.