Early Sorrows
Danilo Kiš
This book was really cute. It's a compilation of short stories from a life of a boy, Andreas Sam. As you see I'm going to continue with Danilo Kiš spam because I need to read a lot of his books for a uni class. Do you ever have to be in the right headspace to "comprehend" a book you're reading? Well, when I started reading this two days ago, I felt like I wasn't. Initially I was bored by it, and at first I thought it's because I'm reading in my native language which I kind of got unused to in the recent years. But around story 4 or 5, I really got into it. It's a lot more child-like than Psalm 44, so I can see why its short stories are read for book reports in middle schools in Serbia. The full name of the book after all is: Early Sorrows: For Children and Sensitive Readers. Once again, it's set during the war years, but unlike Psalm 44, Early Sorrows is a lot more autobiographical. The short stories are almost idylical, if it weren't for the unsettling darkness looming in the background. The story with the highest recognition (and the one I heard of before, but never read it) is The Boy and the Dog. I didn't expect it to hit me as hard as it did, but I was sobbing when I finished it. Probably because of how similar I found it to be with my relationship with my cat that passed away recently, down to the fact that it wasn't truly my cat, and my neighbour was the original owner. A few other stories in this book also made me shed a tear, once again because I relate to the life Andreas has been living as a child, and I felt a nostalgic longing for my grandparents' big garden and chickens. And my mother, my sister and my crazy father... But much like the wild chestnut street at the start of the book, my grandparents home has been destroyed, and it is now gone. First the walls cracked, then the ceilings blackened and the floors rose. Now it's just a pile of rubble. Things that were there in my childhood are now no more. If you're an adult going through a period of homesickness, read this short little book that will surely strike a chord!
