The pinnacle moments in Novak’s fiction, the moments when the reader takes a deep breath and thinks “that’s it, it cannot get any stronger than this” happen in a continuous stream already from page 20, taking us no further, just as life takes us nowhere in, say, Faulkner’s novels which have no entry point or ending.
Miljenko Jergović | Author of Sarajevo Marlboro and The Walnut Mansion
Kristian Novak built this pandemonium with skill, power, vigour, and yet – precision. The novel is a kaleidoscope of voices and scenes, a thick treacle of characters and (mis)fortunes, of happiness that’s just around the corner, and adversity that is somehow neither big nor inevitable: it seems that, for a second, everything could have turned out just right. But nothing ever will! Especially in a coincidental and impossible relationship between a middle-aged “white” woman Milena, already shunned from the “good society” and the young gypsy man Sandi: they were each other’s big opportunity, the last one, for a different and dignified life. And Novak wrote them one of the most impressive love stories in the last couple of decades.
Teofil Pančić, literary critic | Globus
The setting, and at times even the concept, reminds me of the first season of True Detective (the woods, the murder, two detectives, each peculiar in their own right), and I am convinced that, if adapted for the screen, it could be even better that the famous American TV show.
Davor Ivankovac, writer and literary critic | polja.rs
