Book 18 - Aleksandar Hemon "Nowhere Man"

[jazzy_dave]

Aleksandar Hemon "Nowhere Man" (Picador)




I finished this over a week ago but hadn't had a chance to write about it. Well, basically, his book could have been a much better read if he had just ended it earlier. It seems strange but (without giving away too much) the second to last chapter is intense, challenging, and honest. It is a confrontation which is successful in getting the characters and the reader to be really engaged in what is happening and would have made for an uneasy but still more satisfying conclusion. Instead, Hemon wraps up some of the characters in a completely different setting and time period in a way that feels disjointed and completely disconnected from anything else earlier in the book. In a way, it's probably best to just consider the last chapter to be some add on short story not in connection with the rest in my opinion...though perhaps that is just me.

However, the writing is brilliant, and every sentence is very evocative and pops out of the page at you, insisting you have a mental picture of it, and thus a qualified recommedation from me.