Book Review: The Boy's Marble by Natasha Nuhanovic

 My Rating: 4.5⭐

“Everybody knows that the war makes you simultaneously less than yourself and more than yourself. Everybody knows that during the war you can hear steps from kilometres away, but nobody told me that they will stay with me years later or what to do with all these people living inside my eyes.”

It has been twenty years since our unnamed narrator was a child in Sarajevo caught amid the Siege of Sarajevo (that continued from 5 April 1992 to 29 February 1996 for 1,425 days) in which 13,952 (maybe more) people lost their lives, including 1,601 children - an eyewitness to the devastation and bloodshed and the loss of lives. Though she is in a city (Montreal, Canada) far away from where she spent her childhood, her memories are easily triggered. In a first-person stream of consciousness narrative, our narrator moves back and forth between past and present as she recounts memories of her childhood home, her parents and grandparents and her plans of traveling to the moon with her childhood friend- a boy who was her companion and with whom she played marbles with – their favorite marble being a blue-green hued marble that held a special place in both their hearts.

“When the war started, the boy and I changed the rules and we began playing the marble game in a different way. The goal was no longer to flick as many marbles outside of the circle, but to get as many as possible inside. The boy told me the game makes more sense this way, because there is plenty of room for all of the marbles inside. He also said that the game is much harder this way, because it takes a better person to get the marble as close to the others as possible without disturbing them than to just kick them out. Any bozo can do that, and he does not want to be one of them. Maybe the grownups will also play by these rules if they see us play that way, he told me and put on his hat. Maybe one day they will stop ordering more chalk for thicker borders and smaller circles.”

She had hoped to escape the war-torn land with him. However, while she waited on their bench for him, he never showed. In the present day, it has been six months since she has met someone who reminds her of him. As the narrative progresses, we see her thoughts drift back to the memories of her childhood, often the lines between past and present become blurred.

The author also incorporates some facts about post-war Sarajevo, especially detailing the memorials that have been erected dedicated to those who lost their lives. Our narrator describes the Sarajevo Memorial for Children Killed During Siege which features small columns engraved with the names of 521 children who were killed during the siege and a fountain with little footprints engraved at the base. She also describes the Sarajevo Roses, which are craters caused in the asphalt by exploding mortar shells that have been filled with red resin and that remain scattered throughout the streets, often resembling petals of a flower.

“Who would have thought that many years later these wounds would be filled with red resin and turn into flowers? Something broken now resembles flower heads. Who would have thought they would be called Sarajevo Roses? This is what the pain will be eternalized as in history. The holes left by the shells have turned into scattered petals.”

Natasha Nuhanovic’s writing is exquisite. On one hand, while we revisit memories of the devastation and bloodshed of war-torn Sarajevo with the child our narrator once was, we also bear witness to how traumatized the adult remains in the present day. Vividly descriptive and immensely disturbing, The Boy’s Marble requires more than a tad of patience to read through. Every single line of this book needs to be read to follow our narrator’s train of thought. At barely over 200 pages, while this is a heavy and emotionally exhausting read it is also a rewarding and unforgettable one.

Many thanks to Guernica Editions and NetGalley for the digital review copy of this novel. All opinions expressed in this review are my own.