Tradition, modernity, politics, and folklore.

Publisher: Salt
Pages: 212
Type: Fiction
Age: Adult
ISBN: 978-1-784-63095-9
First Published: 15th August 2017
Date Reviewed: 11th August 2017
Rating: 4.5/5

A young woman begins the traditional process of leaving her family’s home for that of her inlaws; she may stay with her new family or she may return home. Her life plays out against a backdrop of a country at war, and the beginnings of a new nation.

How To Be A Kosovan Bride looks at the cultural traditions surrounding life in post-war Kosovo, bringing in stories of refugees and a few folklore-esque tales, too. Told by someone who goes to the country each year, it offers a particular perspective.

There are two threads in this book. In the first, Hamill balances tradition in all its trappings of dignity and honour, with the very modern. There’s a peppering of humour here and there but by and large this is a look at the clash between tradition and modernity, of being a traditional bride and a modern university student with all the cultural and, in the context of university, political, elements behind it.

To do all this, the author takes the wedding day as her starting point, a bride both excited and reluctant – unsure if this is the right thing to do – and then splits her story in two from wedding night onwards. The bride becomes plural, two people, as Hamill looks at two possible lives, one girl ‘passing’ her virginity test and the other ‘failing’ it (though she is in fact a virgin); one girl becomes the traditional Kosovan wife, the other, having been ‘returned’ on day one by her in-laws, deciding to pursue a university degree. For the most part this results in two narratives that are very, very different, and Hamill’s ‘Kosovan Wife’, as the character is called, does not find much happiness, so the narrative leans towards modernity, but there does come a point where both girls have a ‘grass is greener’ moment and wonder whether another life would’ve been a better choice.

Through the Kosovan Wife, Hamill is able to look further into culture, but it’s during the Returned Girl’s sections that the narrative comes into its own, where the author looks at the way the university entrance exam must be passed with flying colours in all subjects and how schools get around this issue where it concerns pupils having particular skills in particular subjects. The book as a whole is full of politics and it packs an almighty punch for its relatively small number of pages and white space. The second thread of the book, vignettes, stories, of the war – people fleeing, children killed, men walked to their death, liberation by people that aren’t all good – are absolutely harrowing; Hamill is completely blunt and in the acknowledgements of the book she thanks various Kosovan acquaintances for their stories that she used as a jumping point for her fiction, underlining the reality behind it all.

Finally there are a couple of faux-folktales dotted about, one spanning several chapters, adding a bit of magical realism to the book, rounding out the text so that it has information about history and the arts as well as the political element. This is where Hamill’s love for the country is shown best, her writing here being fictional but aligning to folklore well.

Of the writing, that second person, it’s difficult to say… if you hate the method, you may grit your teeth at this book, but because the author has made a point of often tamping it down, you may find it easy enough to get on with. There are only a handful of chapters that directly specify a ‘you’ – admittedly it’s not obvious who this ‘you’ is, whether the reader or a character and if the latter which – and the style matches the various stories told. It adds to the sense of oral history, folklore, and stories of war.

How To Be A Kosovan Bride is a good look at a country in conflict and the people on the wrong side of it, as well as a country still coming into its own. It is hard-hitting and very political but the humour and shortness of it balances this out. You’ll likely want to research the facts alongside your reading, especially if your knowledge is limited, as the book has a sense of a basic knowledge base behind it. It’s very much worth doing so.

I received this book for review.

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