The gloomy, barely traversable depths of your own being

One day, the past calls you up on the phone and you drop everything and go to Bosnia, because your childhood friend's brother who's been missing since the war shows up. (The plot of Catch the Rabbit.)

One day, the past texts you and you reply in kind, and you leave your husband and kids to board a train at Grand Central with your old boyfriend from college. (The plot of Run.)

One day, the past sends you an email, apologizing for having been a bad friend, only you were the bad friend. (My actual life.)

One day, you send a message to the past, and it doesn't seem to get through clearly, there's too much interference, and you don't get the reply you hoped for. (The plot of the narrative of my life.)

One day you call up the past, and there's no answer, it's not there anymore. (My greatest fear.)

Find an exit, or an explanation, in every reflection. Any captured moment has backstory.

(I was supposed to be waking up in Dublin today.)

Armin squinted, as if solving a chess problem, held the cigarette with his lips (the smoke was getting into my eyes but I didn't want to close them), and reached for my hairband with both hands. Covering me like a tree, he pulled the bobble and untied my ponytail. He was gentle — like it wasn't the first time he had done it. 

My hair tumbled around my face. And I thought to myself that I wasn't twelve, but a hundred and twelve, and that I had spent that whole century waiting for Armin Begić to set my hair free.

Catch the Rabbit, by Lana Bastašić, is a road trip that meanders down the rabbit hole of memory, excavating a childhood friendship amid the ruins of the Bosnian war. 

The fact is that this was her, Bosnia, and me, and I couldn't name a single tree from the row that observed us. The fact is we exchanged just a couple of necessary sentences all the way to Bugojno — about eating and pissing — our topics never reaching beyond primary biological motives. Another fact is that a road-trip story makes sense only when the travelers, albeit wrongly, believe in reaching the finish line, the journey's end that will solve all problems and end all misery. There's no finish line in Bosnia, all roads seem to be equally languid and pointless; they lead you in circles even when it looks like you're making progress. Driving through Bosnia requires a different dimension: a twisted, cosmic wormhole that doesn't take you to a real, external goal, but into the gloomy, barely traversable depths of your own being.

Some harsh realities and hardened characters are revealed under a loving light. Comparisons of Sara and Lejla to Ferrante's Lena and Lila are warranted.

One time she told me that writers write because they don't have memories of their own, so they make some up. That was before, while Rabbit was alive, and we had just started reading books. But she wasn't right, at least not entirely. Memories might be like a frozen lake to me — blurry and slippery — but every now and then there's a crack in its surface and I can put my hand through it and catch a detail, a recollection in the cold water. But frozen lakes are vicious. Sometimes you catch a fish, other times you fall through and drown. I know from experience that all my memories of her tend towards the latter. That's why I had done my best not to remember for twelve years. And it worked. When it comes to our humanity, it's amazing the low levels to which we can sink when it suits us.

Review: LARB