Love Novel by Ivana Sajko

Published 2024 by Biblioasis, translated by Mima Simić and originally published in Croatian

I think this might be one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read…

I think I might have completely misread this novel…

I read this as a beautiful, heartwarming, and ultimately very relatable exploration of love in the time of late capitalism…

I’m worried that it was meant to be read as if the lives these people live are horrendous, are unsustainable, and are ultimately dangerous things to be a part of, but for me, I felt like I was finally seeing pictures of normal life in fiction, without any pandering or patronising exploration of the idea that being unhappy is fundamentally a sin, which is how I often feel like I am made to feel by literature…

Unhappiness is weakness, unhappiness is failure, unhappiness is weird… But it never has been for me, for me, unhappiness has always been the default feeling that life here, now, evokes…

I’ve written on this blog before about how absolutely awful I find it in my mid-30s not knowing anyone else who hates their life as much as I do.

Obviously, there are elements of my life that I like very much…

I love my baby, Whamathan…

I love my dog…

I love my life partner and occasional collaborator…

I love my barely watched web series scott manley hadley: live at paradise and I love the comedic performance practice that I have (finally!) recently started and is now giving me regular five minutes of enjoyable life outside of the home for possibly the first time in in in in in in in-

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I find that…

Life has more meaning when you’re worried about how you will survive, rather than how you will thrive (not that I’ve ever thrived).

… Being depressed and frustrated by the realities of late capitalism is far more meaningless when within those confines you still maintain a stable economic position…

Depressed, depressed, depressed, depressed and frustrated, not by the impossibility of staying alive, but by the impossibility of finding anything meaningful, of having anything meaningful occur…

I think I misread this book, I think this book was maybe a bad thing for me to read, because I think one is meant to read the alcoholism, the depression, the self-sabotaging, the meaningless casual work, the violence encountered at anti-capitalist protests, the meaningless frisson  of in-the-heart infidelity, the regret, the regret, the regret, the regret… I think one was meant to read all of this as supposedly terrible, as bleak, as horrendous, as unlivable and a terrifying threat as to what any of us could end up in, if we didn’t, I don’t know… if we didn’t… behave better and be more accepting of the mediocrities of our own lives…

This is how shit your life could be, if you didn’t turn up for the office job that kills your soul…

Is that the way it’s meant to be read?

But for me, the freedom, the the the the the lack of constraint of time of routine of of of of of humanity, that is afforded to the characters here in their deeply financially unstable positions, is aspirational, is is is is is is is better than the full full throb and ache of the life that I have where cavernous, voluminous, MASSES of time are just taken up by nothing, less than nothing, eaten eaten eaten and spat out… There is so much time and we just waste it, so many of us, and yet those of us who mourn that lost time are treated as as as as as as as……….

If you’re not mourning the time killed by blunt capitalistic need then then then what what how how who who who …

I

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Because you’re not meant to say things like that, are you?

You’re meant to think oh, I’ve got these landmark achievements as an adult, and thus I should feel satisfaction, and that wasting wasting wasting wasting wasting the majority of my awake hours in meaningless and often offensive employment or travelling to/ from it… one one one one one is meant to roll over and accept that as something necessary and and and inevitable…

And maybe there is something to that, maybe maybe there is something…

There is something that says that that that that that that that that we cannot that we cannot be free of tedium and people being pricks to us without taking a hit in the level of comfort…  and that is true, that is true, that is true … but sometimes physical comforts and economic comforts have a cost that is unbearable…

To return to the situations of Love Novel… The characters are fucked, yeah, financially…

Having to dig through bins to find clothes to wear, having to having to having to pawn the sofa so that you can afford to eat… having to run away because the rent is in arrears… yeah, sure, these are bad situations to be in, sure, But the alternative can be pretty shit, too.

I think Love Novel is meant to be seen as a case about how economics and the current global economic system erodes the possibilities of love and erodes the potentials for joy and beauty …

We see mostly pain but occasionally (and mostly historically, in flashback) the moments of pleasure and the moments of love that exist in this small family living on the poverty line in an unnamed city (though one presumes it’s an unnamed City in Croatia, given that it’s a Croatian novel), tearing themselves and each other apart as poverty, alcoholism and the rigours of Parenthood put increased pressure on each other and on their relationship…

I think you’re meant to see the moments of affection that remain as bleak hangovers only of a long dead romance, but that isn’t how I saw them…

That isn’t how I saw them at all…

For me, it was a blunt blueprint for how people who are important to you remain important even though the circumstances in which the two of you live become untenable and unfounded and unable to ultimately be reconciled with the hopes, dreams, needs and expectations that you’d had about your life together… And…

yes, it is a sad novel about people living sad lives, but these people are not alone…

These people aren’t alone, and maybe their love isn’t what it once was, isn’t what it maybe will become again if they become more stable in a future moment in their lives… But they’re not alone, and when you’re not alone, you’re not… You’re not alone.

I didn’t see the characters here as lonely people, I didn’t see them as feeling as feeling as feeling feeling less when with the other, which happens… 

I’ve been in bad situations (check out my book!) at similar and at opposite points… worrying worrying worrying… sometimes worrying about everything except surviving and also also falling apart… Because, even though not alone, I was lonely…

It’s easy for me to imagine surviving through moments like the characters in this book experience in the relationship that I’m in, ultimately, because I am not lonely, I am not alone…

and, yes, life is difficult, life is stressful, there are difficulties that arise because of the choices one makes in love and the choices that one chooses to prioritise…

but I think it’s a lot easier to seek for meaning when one is permitted by those around you (and there are people around you) to seek for meaning… and one isn’t locked into patterns and situations and circumstances that limit the self…

I think … I think … I think I think this is a beautiful novel, and I think even though it’s meant to be sad, it’s meant to be dark. It’s meant to be unhappy, I found it very life affirming, I found it very romantic, I found it very beautiful and I think maybe I completely misread it, but the worst moments of the relationship depicted here are far better than the worst domestic moments of my life, and it just you know made me feel a little bit seen.

Finally some literary representation for millennials living miserably not because they’re single…

You don’t have to have your life in order in order to have love in it, you don’t have to be emotionally, economically or psychologically stable in order to not be alone. …

you can fuck up and you can make mistakes and you can do stupid things and if you’re not alone, you can be forgiven and you can move on and maybe you can escape to somewhere beautiful…

But maybe you just get locked into these patterns but that sense of hope, that feeling of hope… That is the thing that love is.

Hope is the thing that love permits and without it, it is impossible to feel.

I love this book, but I really think I might have misread it…

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Some passages I highlighted:

the fear of a life where one “make[s] love solely out of panic”

“so he solemnly raised his glass and announced that all was not lost, that everyone should look at the bright side of life, especially her, because she had no loans, or kids, and would still be young and beautiful even in those twenty or thirty years when the unsustainable greed of capital finally devoured itself, and things were looking up, which, of course, was a stale phrase, but she seemed to like it nevertheless, because she said cheers, and she poured him another one, and smiled at him again, and then she kept saying that they must have met before, she must have seen him somewhere before, in the newspapers or even on TV, which could only be explained by the fact that guys like him were a dime a dozen, and that every drunk resembled another drunk and it’s easy to mix them up, mirroring each other’s gestures, curses, bad poetry and speculative theories, like the one on the afterlife which he advanced to prove to her that there was a se- cret connection between their destinies, drooling into her ear as he analysed the constellations of their souls in past lives, claim- ing their paths had crossed even back then, that they had most likely been rivals or enemies, on opposite sides of the barricades, perishing in wars and duels, only to find themselves on the same side after much wandering, behind the masks, tragically mis- cast, and now they were being given a chance that they’d either seize or blow.”

Literature is “has nothing to do with love, because love is sex, love is longing, love is bubbles, flowers, chocolate and the smell of cinnamon, love is an unspeakable ecstasy that defies gravity, recession and life’s blows, and lifts us above the slush on the road and the mud on the floor, and for which he, unlike her, doesn’t have a shred of talent.”

Every page is beautiful, every passage this mixture of cynicism and hope, and maybe the maybe the maybe the cynicism is meant to be seen to overwhelm the hope and almost make it irrelevant … But that’s not how I read it

I am, maybe, naive to the power of love in a life… But I really don’t think I am.

Love is all that most of us have in the world. It might not always feel like enough, it might not always be enough. But we need it, we need it, we need it

However, whoever, and wherever we are. People need love.

And readers need Love Novel.

Highly recommended for anyone who’s not the most unhappy they’ve ever been…

Order direct from Biblioasis via this link