Sara

Sara is the narrator and protagonist of the novel. Much of her young adult life has been spent running away from her past - she stops speaking Bosnian, she loses touch with her mother, and she never speaks to her childhood best friend, Lejla. But when Lejla calls and asks her to pick her up and drive her to Vienna to find her long-lost brother, Sara drops everything, gets on a plane, and sees Lejla for the first time in twelve years. In this way, from the outset of the novel, Bastašić shows that Sara is not as divorced from her past as she thinks she is.

Bastašić's novel is Sara writing both about and to Lejla. Their relationship is fraught with tension; though Sara clearly resents Lejla for her callousness and undignified behavior, she cannot help but love her. In this way, much of...