Summary
Nada Gašić: A Box of Shells
After the completed tetralogy about the city of Zagreb, Nada Gašić's new novel, although preserving the author's style, surprises with a bold approach to the genre. The girl and her experience of the people, the city and the small town, in a sensitive time of maturation, keeps the threads of the plot from turning into melodrama. A box of shells reconstructs a bygone time, Zagreb and other cities, the language of Trogir at that time, recipes and clothes, interpersonal relationships and future-oriented world values, telling a story of forbidden love in which the Hero of Our Time meets Peyton the Town, Mediterranean romance and socialist enthusiasm, progress and conservatism. "This summer vacation would have to be different," hoped the nearly eleven-year-old Tamala in 1961, and her hopes came true in a way that even her unbridled imagination, often bordering on fantasy, could not have predicted. She went on vacation with her mother's best, beautiful young friend, and in crowded trains and boats with unreliable timetables, she met Time Traveler, a fairy tale with a Swan and his books, and they were to be met in Split by Ljepozubi, in whose house in Trogir, she and his mother would spend a short summer vacation. The girl will witness the birth of a swollen emotional relationship between two, along with a third, redundant one. He will return to his city as a changed person. In the fall, some letters will arrive...
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