Love and Obstacles

by Aleksandar Hemon

Book Overview

From the celebrated author of the bestselling Lazarus Project a dazzling collection of stories ... further cementing Hemon's] position among the finest fiction writers working in English (GQ).

The stories of Aleksandar Hemon's Love and Obstacles are united by their narrator, a young man coming of age in Communist-but-cosmopolitan Sarajevo who will leave for the United States just as his city is torn asunder. In...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1594484619
• ISBN13: 9781594484612
• Release Date: May 2010
• Publisher: Penguin Adult Hc/Tr
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.44 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.3" x 8.0"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Outstanding writer

"Love and Obstacles" is a collection of short stories that read like a novella. There is a chronological development that runs through the eight short pieces (the book is only 210 pages long), as well as a maturation that makes this more than eight episodic narrative atoms. Hemon portrays himself as self-centered in all eight stories, but that self-indulgence progresses from the slouchy narcissism of adolesence in the first piece, "Stairway to Heaven", to the awareness of a writer's craft in the final piece "The Noble Truths of Suffering". This is a superb short read.

Gritty and Satisfying

The reason I chose to read this book is that the author is a Bosnian. I am deeply interested in the Balkan mind and this was the shizzle, the real deal. And yet the stories are Aleksander Hemon, and as I should have known, uniquely individual - like all stories told truely. So Balkan-mediated-through-Hemon, who is, ultimately, Hemon. (I think what I am trying to say here is that we all have our own stories - so just maybe there is no such thing as the Balkan mind after all. But if there were, Hemon's stories would be as valid a representative as any.) The stories, regardless of the setting; Africa, Europe, or America, are filled with grit and pockets of inky darkness, swirled 'round with a balancing lightness of being that elevates to art things like the cruelties and perplexing nature of childhood traumas, and the squalor of the new immigrant's life. This guy can write. I will be looking for more from him.

Amazing Voice Brings New Worlds to Life

As a young writer, Aleksander Hemon has already accumulated a lifetime of writer accolades: he's a MacArthur Foundation "genius" grant recipient, he's been a Guggenheim fellow, and both of his recent books ("The Lazarus Project" and "Nowhere Man") have been short-listed for the National Book Award. So expectations for "Love and Obstacles," a collection of short stories, was high. Aleksander Hemon did not disappoint. It takes a little while to immerse yourself in the autobiographical world of Bosnian Hemon if you've never experienced his writing before. Somewhat jarring, too, in this volume is that the first story is set in Africa, where he tells his own "Heart of Darkness" tale about disaffected youth and a rogue CIA type. It's a good story, but once the book moves on to other, more typical Hemon fare--stories of Sarajevo, transplantation to North America, and stories of family life--it's easier to see what all the fuss is about. Hemon writes with humor and pathos. He is able to poke fun at his own writerly ambitions, as well as those of his father (who writes the story of his life via a movie script that he then wants his son to act out), a Bosnian poet who haunts the cafes of Sarajevo (and mistakes the Hemon character for a conductor), and a visiting Pulitzer Prize winner whose life's trauma (Vietnam) mirrors that of Hemon's (the fall of Sarajevo). It's all fodder for the vagaries of life and the impossibility of living in an absurd world when you aspire to see its truth and beauty. Two factors will leap out when readers attempt to decipher just what it is that makes this writing so potent. One is the way in which the writer is able to bring his characters to life. In each of the eight stories told in "Love and Obstacles," the characters are larger than life, strong in personality but vulnerable and frail, too, from the life experiences they have suffered through (yet are reluctant to reveal). The second strength Hemon brings to his writing is his unexpected use of language. The twists and turns, the play on songs and other cultural motifs, the odd phrasing that cuts to the quick--these are the heart and soul of "Love and Obstacles." Finally, the key turn that brings most stories in "Love and Obstacles" to their climax is done with a poetic phrasing that's almost startling. Caught up in the humor of the situation, readers don't see the vulnerable punch line coming. It's magic when it arrives. And that is the reason Aleksander Hemon is worth reading.

Prized author

The first offering in this collection of stories, a family saga, is set in Africa. Books replace an absent father and depressed mother for our hero. Spending the summer in Africa together as a family is unwelcome news to the narrator who has a girlfriend in Sarajevo. A neighbor in Kinshasa, an American named Spinelli, entertains the sixteen year old while he, (Spinelli), drinks J & B and listens to Led Zeppelin. In place of a lecture on alcohol and drugs, the teenager is made to accompany his family everywhere. The jaunts with his friend Spinelli and Natalie, Spinelli's date, are history. But in Gombe he is permitted to wander and the boy runs into Spinelli and a surprise. In another story it is noted that the narrator's father likes the family democracy game. The son is sent to buy a freezer. A lot happens. When Sarajevo is beseiged, the narrator in 'The Conductor' is in America. He sees the action on his TV. A poet from the war zone, Bosnia, is invited to Iowa City for twelve weeks. His poems come from the eye of the storm. One of the characters says that American poets used to be like that but now all they do is teach and complain and bother their students inappropriately. Many of the figures in the stories are Bosnian, colorful, winning, and absurd, in some instances. Some scenes are set in Chicago, the author's hometown. A father, mother, son, and daughter keep coming up in the stories. One of the stories describes a father in Canada finding spiritual renewal in beekeeping, an activity pursued by his own father and grandfather. The portrait of the tempestuous man, adapting to his new North American existence, Canada, is very moving. Focusing on the son, a stand-in for the author, it is related that he spent his childhood fighting a series of wars, historic, imaginary, and ones fought over the playground. A Bosnian woman, Alma, wants to make a movie about identity, and the narrator assures her, glibly, that he is willing to put all of his identites at her disposal. In another story the narrator recognizes his parents fictionalized in the work of an American writer. This talented writer has published a great collection of stories. He reminds me of Saul Bellow. Undoubtedy there is no question that he earned the MacArthur 'genius grant' that has been bestowed on him.

A Young Man's Ideals Tested by the World's Heart of Darkness

If there is a motif in these eight wonderfully crafted short stories which all have an autobiographical feel of a young man's spiritual and intellectual growing pains, it is taken from one of the narrator's poems: He describes his longing to love, to find transcendence through art and romance, constantly at war with a nihilistic world. Hence the book's title Love and Obstacles. In one of the collection's most powerful stories, "Stairway to Heaven," the sixteen-year-old narrator, from Bosnia, lives for a summer in the Congo where he is befriended by a perverse, slimy character who exposes the narrator to a grotesque world with no moral boundaries and what becomes the "Heart of Darkness." This rich 30-page story is worthy of a novel and is my favorite story in the collection. In "Everything," the narrator, now seventeen, must perform the errand of buying a refrigerator for his family and risks his life to do so as he must navigate through a world of criminals, hustlers, and other brutes. In "The Conductor," the narrator befriends a poet, is inspired and maddened by his poetry and finally must witness the poet's decomposition as a human being. In sum, the stories dramatize the intense idealistic imagination of a young man seeking refuge in literature and art and love who finds the world's darkness encroaching on his bubble and he succeeds at giving us a powerful voice to render this conflict. Reading Hemon's masterful stories, I am reminded of some of the best stories by Chekhov and Isaac Babel. A modern writer who captures some of the aforementioned themes is David Bezmozgis' collection Natasha: And Other Stories. Read the title story. You won't forget it.