Rating: 
Summary: Sparse, but mesmerizing
Review: ...I did not find the translation poor. If anything, thetranslator did an amazing job of rendering Serbo-Croatian into Englishin such a way that I would venture to guess that the emotional impactof the original language has been preserved. The writing is sparse. There are few adjectives used and the sentences are short. This makes for a very emotionally tough read--your imagination is forced to deal with the acts taking place. They are not prettified. They are raw. They are powerful. They force you to think about the ugliness that is inflicted upon these women. What's interesting is that S. makes two choices in this book that others may have had serious problems with. In order not to give anything away, I won't talk about them here, but by making the choices that she does she is able to have some agency over her victimhood. I have been haunted by this book for days. It will stay with me forever.
Rating: 
Summary: When someone leaves behind a toothbrush ...
Review: ...it is a sure sign that that someone will not need it any more.
Brutality and horror described in minute detail. The inner workings of a woman's mind after she has been torn from her daily life, in which she had naively believed the war in the former Yugoslavia would not touch her or her village. The vivid detail of her camp experience, the alienation, the isolation, the feeling of losing what little trust you had in others (selfishness being the first "virtue" of being confined to the camp) is striking. The book begins with the description of the woman, S., giving birth to a baby who was a product of her rape in the camps. She does not want to see or touch the baby for fear she will then feel responsible for it. The book then goes back in time to describe how S. came to this point, to Stockholm, Sweden, where she gives birth.
The book is difficult to read straight through, many passages making me feel physically ill and disturbed. A passage about the tortures women endured in the camp at the hands of their captors was particularly difficult to read (cigarette burns on their skin, soldiers carving symbols into the women's skin, and various other humiliating and painful abuses).
Rating: 
Summary: Barely worth the read
Review: Although the reader is given a slight insite to the life of a woman inside a refugee camp and insight to how being victimized by the war affected her emotionally, it is a difficult and dry read. The translation is poor and I found some parts difficult to follow. Although the author's writing style did not appeal to me, after reading the book, I can now understand how a woman could reject her newborn child. Since the author begins and ends the story with the birth, that understanding may have been her objective. If so, she suceeded in my case. However, I think there are better books on this subject to spend your money on.
Rating:
Summary: It took time to proccess
Review: I grew up in Bosnia during the war and I have heard stories of rape and cruelty and all the things that were happening. Thanks to my mother I escaped all that and I never believed that such things are possible. That human beings are capable to do what my people did to each other in this war. It took me more than a month to read this book because I kept going back to the passages trying to find words that will make it less brutal. Reading "S" has cleared to me why all the rape did happen in Bosnia and why it is often a war crime. It is a very powerfull novel that reveals details that are taboo and not talked off. And I would suggest anyone who has a strong stomac to read it.
Rating:
Summary: It took time to proccess
Review: I grew up in Bosnia during the war and I have heard stories of rape and cruelty and all the things that were happening. Thanks to my mother I escaped all that and I never believed that such things are possible. That human beings are capable to do what my people did to each other in this war. It took me more than a month to read this book because I kept going back to the passages trying to find words that will make it less brutal. Reading "S" has cleared to me why all the rape did happen in Bosnia and why it is often a war crime. It is a very powerfull novel that reveals details that are taboo and not talked off. And I would suggest anyone who has a strong stomac to read it.
Rating:
Summary: The Most Brutally Honest Novel About War I've Read
Review: I just wanted to write a review to balance out the 1 star that was given. This book is amazing in it's insight, honesty, and brutal truth about a war most Americans know little about. It's as if the author, a woman and a fine novelist, went through these ordeals first hand or at least had first hand knowledge of the atrocities of the war that was not only waged on the streets and in the countryside but upon bodies and human emotion.
Rating:
Summary: Brutally true
Review: I rate this on a par with A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovitch and Primo Levy's Survival in Auschwitz. I've just spent 15 minutes trying to elaborate on that praise; I cannot.
Rating:
Summary: You won't soon forget...
Review: It is difficult to put into words how this book affected me. As a woman, it touches me to my very core. Slavenka Drakulic's honest portrayal of what some women suffered during the collapse of Yugoslavia is precise. At times it is absolutely unbearable. At times it is the most beautiful tale of human strength. It is definitely something to read about things that happen outside of our own lives. To look at these people and what they suffered is to take a step into a world that is entirely unfamiliar. Finally, I was able to grasp the severity of such conflicts that were often a sidebar on the nightly news when I was still a girl. The gravity of this book is devastating, but so forthright, it is impossible to stop reading. If you want to gain some perspective on the sufferings that occurred not to long ago, and are possibly still occurring to this day in certain parts of the former Yugoslavia, S. will definitely give you that perspective. Be prepared forever for an intense and graphic read. It will disturb you, and at times comfort, however, you won't be able to erase the images that Slavenka Drakulic superbly illustrates.
Rating:
Summary: You won't soon forget...
Review: It is difficult to put into words how this book affected me. As a woman, it touches me to my very core. Slavenka Drakulic's honest portrayal of what some women suffered during the collapse of Yugoslavia is precise. At times it is absolutely unbearable. At times it is the most beautiful tale of human strength. It is definitely something to read about things that happen outside of our own lives. To look at these people and what they suffered is to take a step into a world that is entirely unfamiliar. Finally, I was able to grasp the severity of such conflicts that were often a sidebar on the nightly news when I was still a girl. The gravity of this book is devastating, but so forthright, it is impossible to stop reading. If you want to gain some perspective on the sufferings that occurred not to long ago, and are possibly still occurring to this day in certain parts of the former Yugoslavia, S. will definitely give you that perspective. Be prepared forever for an intense and graphic read. It will disturb you, and at times comfort, however, you won't be able to erase the images that Slavenka Drakulic superbly illustrates.
Rating:
Summary: The horrors of war from a woman's perspective
Review: March, 1993 - A boy is born in a Swedish hospital. Instead of cuddling the baby, the mother turns away. She doesn't want to touch it. She feels nothing but animosity towards the tiny creature. She considers suffocating it but can't stand the thought of another death. Her mind goes back in time to May when she was a school teacher in a Bosnian village. In short, terse sentences she relives the horror of the Serb soldiers emptying the town and her life in a prison camp. Thus begins months filled with humiliation, torture, rape, and murder. The uncertainty and helplessness of the victims of "ethnic cleansing" and the selfishness that is essential to survival are related in chapters whose titles are locations and months. The book reads like a journal with each chapter being a month, but is told in the third person with occasional thoughts in the first person in italics. People and towns are reduced to initials. The Serbs are not even given initials - they are just a nameless death-dealing terror that surrounds the women of the camp. This is a story of the horrors of war as it is experienced by women, but it also tells the tale of the courage and resilience of the human spirit. Hard to read, but important, this is a great piece of writing that will be appreciated by students of the Balkan tragedy and by those who can stand to face the stark realities of war.
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