Summary
Zoran Ferić: Spiderman
The stories from this book were written in parallel with Ferić's novels Alone by the Sea and Traveling Theatre, over a period of about fifteen years, and thematically they are very diverse - many dissect marital relationships, but there is also the filming of a film about the massacre near Dubica during the Homeland War, a story that takes place in Komiža about fifty years ago and is reminiscent of an ancient tragedy, a story that follows an unusual journey around Chile... these stories are distant and intertwined at the same time, the narrator is the same and we, reading the book, seem to be surfing through different periods of his life. Some stories, on the other hand, consist of smaller, relatively independent units that are connected by space or narrative situation, so we have the impression that the book contains several smaller books of stories, which we can easily imagine as separate books. But all of them are masterfully interconnected, they support and deepen each other, and testify to Ferić's compositional skill, the amazing skill with which he builds his books and their worlds.
Twenty-five years after the book of stories Angel in the Offside, Ferić returns to the genre with which he entered literature and which made him one of the most important local storytellers with Spiderman. For those who wonder how much the author has changed in those 25 years, here is a possible answer: There is still black humor and the grotesque, but in this book the author is gentler, more subtle and seems to love his characters more.
The stories in Spiderman are intriguing, dynamic, imbued with unobtrusive humor, but also disturbing and often shocking. Sometimes they are intricate narrative labyrinths, but their worlds are rich and complex, and reading them is a real adventure.
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