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The Hired Man
The new novel from the winner of the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize, The Hired Man is a taut, powerful novel of a small town and its dark wartime secrets, unwittingly brought into the light by a family of outsiders.
Aminatta Forna has established herself as one of our most perceptive and uncompromising chroniclers of war and the way it reverberates, sometimes imperceptibly, in the daily lives of those touched by it. With The Hired Man, she has delivered a tale of a Croatian village after the War of Independence, and a family of newcomers who expose its secrets.
Duro is off on a morning’s hunt when he sees something one rarely does in Gost: a strange car. Later that day, he overhears its occupants, a British woman, Laura, and her two children, who have taken up residence in a house Duro knows well. He offers his assistance getting their water working again, and soon he is at the house every day, helping get it ready as their summer cottage, and serving as Laura’s trusted confidant.
But the other residents of Gost are not as pleased to have the interlopers, and as Duro and Laura’s daughter Grace uncover and begin to restore a mosaic in the front that has been plastered over, Duro must be increasingly creative to shield the family from the town’s hostility, and his own past with the house’s former occupants. As the inhabitants of Gost go about their days, working, striving to better themselves and their town, and arguing, the town’s volatile truths whisper ever louder.
A masterpiece of storytelling haunted by lost love and a restrained menace, this novel recalls Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee and Anil’s Ghost by Michael Ondaatje. The Hired Man confirms Aminatta Forna as one of our most important writers.
Aminatta Forna has established herself as one of our most perceptive and uncompromising chroniclers of war and the way it reverberates, sometimes imperceptibly, in the daily lives of those touched by it. With The Hired Man, she has delivered a tale of a Croatian village after the War of Independence, and a family of newcomers who expose its secrets.
Duro is off on a morning’s hunt when he sees something one rarely does in Gost: a strange car. Later that day, he overhears its occupants, a British woman, Laura, and her two children, who have taken up residence in a house Duro knows well. He offers his assistance getting their water working again, and soon he is at the house every day, helping get it ready as their summer cottage, and serving as Laura’s trusted confidant.
But the other residents of Gost are not as pleased to have the interlopers, and as Duro and Laura’s daughter Grace uncover and begin to restore a mosaic in the front that has been plastered over, Duro must be increasingly creative to shield the family from the town’s hostility, and his own past with the house’s former occupants. As the inhabitants of Gost go about their days, working, striving to better themselves and their town, and arguing, the town’s volatile truths whisper ever louder.
A masterpiece of storytelling haunted by lost love and a restrained menace, this novel recalls Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee and Anil’s Ghost by Michael Ondaatje. The Hired Man confirms Aminatta Forna as one of our most important writers.
294 pages, Hardcover
First published March 1, 2013
410 people are currently reading
5139 people want to read
About the author
Aminatta Forna
20 books616 followersAminatta’s books have been translated into eighteen languages. Her essays have appeared in Freeman’s, Granta, The Guardian, LitHub, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, The Observer and Vogue. She has written stories for BBC radio and written and presented television documentaries including “The Lost Libraries of Timbuktu” (BBC Television, 2009) and “Girl Rising” (CNN, 2013).
Aminatta is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of the Folio Academy. She has acted as judge for the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Bailey Prize for Women’s Fiction, the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award, the Caine Prize and the International Man Booker Prize.
In 2003 Aminatta established the Rogbonko Project to build a school in a village in Sierra Leone. The charity has also run a number of projects in the spheres of adult education, sanitation and maternal health.
Aminatta is the recipient of a Windham Campbell Award from Yale University, has won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Best Book Award 2011, a Hurston Wright Legacy Award the Liberaturpreis in Germany and the Aidoo-Snyder Book Prize. She has been a finalist for the Neustadt Prize for Literature, the Orange Prize for Fiction, the IMPAC Award and the Warwick Prize. Aminatta Forna was made OBE in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours 2017.
She is currently Lannan Visiting Chair of Poetics at Georgetown University and Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University.
Aminatta is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a member of the Folio Academy. She has acted as judge for the Samuel Johnson Prize, the Bailey Prize for Women’s Fiction, the Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award, the Caine Prize and the International Man Booker Prize.
In 2003 Aminatta established the Rogbonko Project to build a school in a village in Sierra Leone. The charity has also run a number of projects in the spheres of adult education, sanitation and maternal health.
Aminatta is the recipient of a Windham Campbell Award from Yale University, has won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Best Book Award 2011, a Hurston Wright Legacy Award the Liberaturpreis in Germany and the Aidoo-Snyder Book Prize. She has been a finalist for the Neustadt Prize for Literature, the Orange Prize for Fiction, the IMPAC Award and the Warwick Prize. Aminatta Forna was made OBE in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours 2017.
She is currently Lannan Visiting Chair of Poetics at Georgetown University and Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 620 reviews
October 30, 2013
The book has been well summarized in numerous reviews here, but I wanted to add a response to some reviewers who feel that this book doesn't adequately address the atrocities of the Balkan wars, and that the narrator doesn't specify the political details, or who was killing whom. The author manages to sink the reader so thoroughly into the narrator's mind that I believe she's successfully captured the mindset of the people who were caught up in these conflicts, who didn't see them coming until the storm was upon their communities, and who remained unsure of how to respond. I'm deeply glad that this book was about the psychology of genocidal conflicts, rather than taking a cheap narrative path that wallowed in descriptions of gruesome violence. By putting the reader into the mind of an individual and dealing with his individual relationships and connections and memories, the reader is offered a much more intimate view of what happened - the kind of human story that tends to get lost in the overwhelming and impersonal statistics of deaths, mass graves, and so forth. From a distance, genocidal conflicts appear to be about things like ethnicity, but when you look at things on a community level, you understand that they're about failures of human relationships, and a lack of order that allows those failures to take on horrific proportions. I appreciate authors who are willing to tackle the enormous task of telling these stories. Definitely not "chick lit disguised as a war story," as one reviewer accuses.
August 6, 2013
Duro Kolak is 46-years old. He lives a quiet, solitary life in Gost, a beautiful, isolated town in Croatia. His two dogs, Kos and Zeka, accompany him on his rambles through the fields and woods, looking for game for his supper. He occasionally ventures into town to buy bread, or to have a drink at the Zodijak, where he seems to sit at a remove from old friends and neighbors. His is a watchful, quiet, solitary life.
As Aminatta Forna's latest novel The Hired Man opens, Duro's hunting is interrupted when he sees a strange car, four-wheel drive, slowly turn down an empty road. He later walks to a blue house, "A row of trees grew on the verge in front; over the years I'd watched three of them reach and exceed the height of the roof, the fourth had died some years back. Nobody to cut it down and so it remained standing next to its living companions, branches like bleached bones. The overhang of the roof cast a deep shadow in the walls of the house, stains flowed from the windowsills down the whitewash, buddleia sprouted from a high gutter: a slow slip into decay. Nobody had a reason to go there, not even children for whom there was not shortage of empty houses to play in and anyway this one was too far away, beyond the boundaries of the town." The four-wheel drive is parked haphazardly on the driveway, and sounds of voices speaking English reach Duro.
With these scenes, Forna sets the stage for the encounter between Duro and an English family who bought the blue house: Laura, the mother, Grace, her 15-year old daughter, and her older son, Matthew. (Laura's husband plans to join the family later.) Duro answers some questions for Laura about Gost, and about the blue house (where to get water, how to handle fixing the roof), and is hired to help Laura to prepare the house to be sold or rented as a vacation property.
The blue house itself becomes a symbol for a past that is buried, but just under the surface, within reach, in Gost. Specters of the violence of civil war surround Gost. The countryside is beautiful, but mines remain buried in golden fields. Houses are deserted. A bakery remains empty. As Duro, Laura, Grace and Matt work to restore the blue house to its previous state, not only fixing roofs and walls, but also excavating and restoring a mosaic and a fountain, Duro very slowly reveals more about Gost's past, and his past, first matter of fact details about the town itself and stories about Duro's childhood, long since past. Later, his reminiscences become more detailed and pointed, more stark. The past subsumes the present.
Forna does a commendable job revealing Duro's past life. His retelling events around his relationship with Laura and her children is in past tense, while his recollections of a long-ago past are in present tense, showing how vital and alive those memories are compared to a haunted post-war existence. As the novel continues, the balance between past and present shifts, reminiscences become longer and more detailed. Duro and the town of Gost emerge as damaged by the past, unable and, perhaps, unwilling to move beyond a violent past of loss and conflict. The Hired Man explores the high costs of civil war, the power of history's ghosts, and the costs of one man's attempts to hold individuals accountable for a violent past. Forna writes beautifully and powerfully, with passages that reveal the beauty of the countryside as well as the skeletons buried in shallow graves. This is not a perfect novel -- Grace comes across as far too wise for her 15 years, and Laura seems almost unbelievably unaware of the violent history of this part of the world. These faults are minor, though, compared to the beauty and sadness of the story, the power of Forna's writing, and the importance of her themes. Highly recommended.
As Aminatta Forna's latest novel The Hired Man opens, Duro's hunting is interrupted when he sees a strange car, four-wheel drive, slowly turn down an empty road. He later walks to a blue house, "A row of trees grew on the verge in front; over the years I'd watched three of them reach and exceed the height of the roof, the fourth had died some years back. Nobody to cut it down and so it remained standing next to its living companions, branches like bleached bones. The overhang of the roof cast a deep shadow in the walls of the house, stains flowed from the windowsills down the whitewash, buddleia sprouted from a high gutter: a slow slip into decay. Nobody had a reason to go there, not even children for whom there was not shortage of empty houses to play in and anyway this one was too far away, beyond the boundaries of the town." The four-wheel drive is parked haphazardly on the driveway, and sounds of voices speaking English reach Duro.
With these scenes, Forna sets the stage for the encounter between Duro and an English family who bought the blue house: Laura, the mother, Grace, her 15-year old daughter, and her older son, Matthew. (Laura's husband plans to join the family later.) Duro answers some questions for Laura about Gost, and about the blue house (where to get water, how to handle fixing the roof), and is hired to help Laura to prepare the house to be sold or rented as a vacation property.
The blue house itself becomes a symbol for a past that is buried, but just under the surface, within reach, in Gost. Specters of the violence of civil war surround Gost. The countryside is beautiful, but mines remain buried in golden fields. Houses are deserted. A bakery remains empty. As Duro, Laura, Grace and Matt work to restore the blue house to its previous state, not only fixing roofs and walls, but also excavating and restoring a mosaic and a fountain, Duro very slowly reveals more about Gost's past, and his past, first matter of fact details about the town itself and stories about Duro's childhood, long since past. Later, his reminiscences become more detailed and pointed, more stark. The past subsumes the present.
Forna does a commendable job revealing Duro's past life. His retelling events around his relationship with Laura and her children is in past tense, while his recollections of a long-ago past are in present tense, showing how vital and alive those memories are compared to a haunted post-war existence. As the novel continues, the balance between past and present shifts, reminiscences become longer and more detailed. Duro and the town of Gost emerge as damaged by the past, unable and, perhaps, unwilling to move beyond a violent past of loss and conflict. The Hired Man explores the high costs of civil war, the power of history's ghosts, and the costs of one man's attempts to hold individuals accountable for a violent past. Forna writes beautifully and powerfully, with passages that reveal the beauty of the countryside as well as the skeletons buried in shallow graves. This is not a perfect novel -- Grace comes across as far too wise for her 15 years, and Laura seems almost unbelievably unaware of the violent history of this part of the world. These faults are minor, though, compared to the beauty and sadness of the story, the power of Forna's writing, and the importance of her themes. Highly recommended.
September 17, 2013
Now, here's a thing, a British woman writer of Sierra Leone extraction writing a novel from the point of view of a Croatian man living in the aftermath of the Balkan wars of recent history. And doing it oh so very well. This book will pull you in. Into the man who leads a limited, disciplined, rustic life for reasons not yet known. Who comes to know a British family, the mother in particular, who blunder into a village of secrets and anguish by buying an old house at a bargain price as a picturesque second home and promising investment. As oblivious bourgeois outsiders tend to do. The man is hired to renovate, and in a train of subtle, natural revelations, of both heart and of history, we learn of the layers of things, and of the truth of this particular place, the intricacies of betrayal, the slippage of slight prejudice into discrimination into genocide, that few of us could promise to resist in extremity. This corner of confused, ambiguous history could be so many places in the world - even Sierra Leone - and Aminatta Forna in this intriguing, full-hearted, and deeply serious book has found a way into humanity's repeated shame that is skillfully beguiling. Entertaining, artfully written, daring, profoundly important - what more can be asked from a book? Oh, I met the author briefly at a reading in Bath, England, and can say that she appears to be warm, poised, thoughtful, and kind to questioners. Has come far; will go much further.
April 26, 2017
Aminatta Forna was already established as one of my favourite writers before I read this, the first book she has written that is set entirely outside Africa. She brings her experience of civil war in Sierra Leone to this subtle and devastating account of the wars in the former Yugoslavia and their aftermath. It is particularly strong on how civilisation in society breaks down, and how fragile any healing process can be. Like all Forna's work, the book is also beautifully written.
July 6, 2016
A beautiful book about how the Yugoslav Wars affected (and still affect) a small Croatian village. Shown very quietly and without any 'special effects'. Highly recommended!
4,5*
4,5*
November 30, 2025
a slow uncovering of stories and histories, moving alongside the gradual examination and restoration of a house and the uncovering of a mosaic.
the story portrays really well the different perspectives of someone local, and an outsider with seemingly no real understanding of the history and culture of the country they're in, and their own perspectives/position and obliviousness.
it also portrays really well the damage of war, and how broken things reveal their history, the trauma embodied in place and objects... and how you can't really restore them to what they were before, but there is a chance of some mending.
the story portrays really well the different perspectives of someone local, and an outsider with seemingly no real understanding of the history and culture of the country they're in, and their own perspectives/position and obliviousness.
it also portrays really well the damage of war, and how broken things reveal their history, the trauma embodied in place and objects... and how you can't really restore them to what they were before, but there is a chance of some mending.
January 7, 2020
Early on in this 300-page book is a stark passage from the 46 year old narrator of the story:
“I’ve lived here for 18 years, and maybe with luck I’ll live twice as long again. More than likely I shall die alone, as I live now, and as I have no executor a person or persons will be appointed to come and deal with my estates, sort my belongings into piles to sell and throw. They will go through my papers and when they do they will find this. Maybe that person is you. Or at least, I have to tell this story and I must tell it to somebody, so it may as well be you, come to sort out my belongings. You are young and you don’t know or don’t remember the things that happened. Nobody seems to remember, even those who are old enough, those who were there. But I remember it all, every grinding moment, hour and day, how things unfolded. Our story doesn’t show us in a very good light. I wish it were different, but there it is. This story is not the story of the whole of the past, just the story of a single summer.”
Duro Kolak goes back and forth narrating what is happening now in his Croatian village and what happened some 18 years ago. And at the beginning and even in the middle of the novel I was beginning to ask myself if the rave reviews on the back cover were over-rated ( The Independent [UK] “A masterful novel by a gifted writer…”; London Evening Standard “…the best writer of fiction in this field (of war and its aftermath); Harper’s Bazaar comparing her to Monica Ali and Kiran Desai).
But ominous things keep on popping up in the telling of the story…currently as well as in the past and the frequency of the ominous things increase so that by the last 100 pages I am spell-bound and can’t stop reading. My eyes want to move from the page I am reading to the adjacent page and it is everything I can do to stop my eyes from darting forward…the writing is that gripping. What happened in the Croatian village of Gost 18 years prior to when the story opens (2007) is hard to get through…hard to fathom (how can people do such things). But any of my doubts about Aminatti Forna being a spellbinding author were erased in those last 100 pages. She had my full attention!
“I’ve lived here for 18 years, and maybe with luck I’ll live twice as long again. More than likely I shall die alone, as I live now, and as I have no executor a person or persons will be appointed to come and deal with my estates, sort my belongings into piles to sell and throw. They will go through my papers and when they do they will find this. Maybe that person is you. Or at least, I have to tell this story and I must tell it to somebody, so it may as well be you, come to sort out my belongings. You are young and you don’t know or don’t remember the things that happened. Nobody seems to remember, even those who are old enough, those who were there. But I remember it all, every grinding moment, hour and day, how things unfolded. Our story doesn’t show us in a very good light. I wish it were different, but there it is. This story is not the story of the whole of the past, just the story of a single summer.”
Duro Kolak goes back and forth narrating what is happening now in his Croatian village and what happened some 18 years ago. And at the beginning and even in the middle of the novel I was beginning to ask myself if the rave reviews on the back cover were over-rated ( The Independent [UK] “A masterful novel by a gifted writer…”; London Evening Standard “…the best writer of fiction in this field (of war and its aftermath); Harper’s Bazaar comparing her to Monica Ali and Kiran Desai).
But ominous things keep on popping up in the telling of the story…currently as well as in the past and the frequency of the ominous things increase so that by the last 100 pages I am spell-bound and can’t stop reading. My eyes want to move from the page I am reading to the adjacent page and it is everything I can do to stop my eyes from darting forward…the writing is that gripping. What happened in the Croatian village of Gost 18 years prior to when the story opens (2007) is hard to get through…hard to fathom (how can people do such things). But any of my doubts about Aminatti Forna being a spellbinding author were erased in those last 100 pages. She had my full attention!
July 21, 2016
The Hired Man is set in the small village of Gost in Croatia and tells the story of the impact an English family's arrival has on the inhabitants there. The story is told from the perspective of the family's neighbour Duro who befriends them and helps them to renovate the house. Duro's narrative switches from the present to memories of what happened in Gost during the War of Independence some years earlier. The reveal is a slow one, with the tension expertly built by Forna's wonderful writing.
For me, one of the things that really hit home about The Hired Man was how quickly, during periods of war, a "normal" way of life can be torn asunder. In this it reminded me a little of Half of a Yellow Sun. I thought it was really interesting that Forna never really revealed why people were taking sides against each other, but more described the effects.
I will definitely be reading more by Aminatta Forna and I am really glad this book was chosen as a moderator pick in the 21st Century Literature group, as otherwise I don't think I would have picked it up.
For me, one of the things that really hit home about The Hired Man was how quickly, during periods of war, a "normal" way of life can be torn asunder. In this it reminded me a little of Half of a Yellow Sun. I thought it was really interesting that Forna never really revealed why people were taking sides against each other, but more described the effects.
I will definitely be reading more by Aminatta Forna and I am really glad this book was chosen as a moderator pick in the 21st Century Literature group, as otherwise I don't think I would have picked it up.
October 18, 2013
No, I did not learn my lesson from Breathless, and entered yet another First Reads Giveaway because I liked the cover. This one, however, paid off by actually being a GOOD BOOK.
Duro, a lifelong resident of Gost, is startled to find that the home of his childhood friend is now owned by an Englishwoman and her two teenagers. He introduces himself and is hired to revive the old house. Before long, he has insinuated himself into the family's lives, though his status is not quite so well defined. While there is a definite flirtation going on between Duro and Laura, the mother, she is still devoted to her absent husband. Duro, meanwhile, feels sorry for her unattractive and neglected daughter, and is annoyed by Laura's persistent doting on her obnoxious brat of a son, but, what can he do? He's just the hired man.
Though extremely well written, events in this book move very s-l-o-w-l-y, and it's probably not for everyone.
If you're looking for a good, character-driven novel about a man who is haunted by the past and uncertain about the future, this one is as beautiful as the cover.
Duro, a lifelong resident of Gost, is startled to find that the home of his childhood friend is now owned by an Englishwoman and her two teenagers. He introduces himself and is hired to revive the old house. Before long, he has insinuated himself into the family's lives, though his status is not quite so well defined. While there is a definite flirtation going on between Duro and Laura, the mother, she is still devoted to her absent husband. Duro, meanwhile, feels sorry for her unattractive and neglected daughter, and is annoyed by Laura's persistent doting on her obnoxious brat of a son, but, what can he do? He's just the hired man.
Though extremely well written, events in this book move very s-l-o-w-l-y, and it's probably not for everyone.
If you're looking for a good, character-driven novel about a man who is haunted by the past and uncertain about the future, this one is as beautiful as the cover.
November 16, 2013
So much of what is in this book is not written on its pages but is felt between the lines and by some but not all of the characters within it. Full of atmosphere, an unspoken history, mistrust and those who want to forget and those who need to remember.
An English family move into the blue host in the village of Gost and their neighbour helps them to make repairs, he is one who wishes to remember, however his actions and the presence of foreigners will irk some who prefer to forget.
Brilliantly orchestrated and sensitively shared, this book will make you want to know more.
My full review here at Word by Word.
An English family move into the blue host in the village of Gost and their neighbour helps them to make repairs, he is one who wishes to remember, however his actions and the presence of foreigners will irk some who prefer to forget.
Brilliantly orchestrated and sensitively shared, this book will make you want to know more.
My full review here at Word by Word.
August 6, 2023
4,5 ⭐
Leí recientemente una anécdota de la escritora Dubravka Ugrešić, en el que, al tomar posesión de una casa en un pueblo de Croacia, se sorprende de que, veinticinco años después de terminada la guerra de secesión yugoslava, aún queden campos minados, por donde no se puede cruzar ni tampoco se puede sembrar; en ellos sólo crecen flores silvestres.
Para la misma época, en el pueblo imaginario de Gost (sin relación con el término ghost, fantasma), y sí en cambio con el término guest (invitado, huésped), el lugareño Duro ve la llegada de una familia de ingleses para ocupar su nueva casa en las afueras del pueblo. Él conoce esa casa, cercana a la suya, y se ha ocupado de evitar su excesivo deterioro en los años de abandono. Parco y prudente, se acerca a dar la bienvenida y ofrecer sus servicios, en caso de que lo requirieran, iniciando un vínculo que se afianzará durante ese verano.
Como buen conocedor del pueblo, los acompañará y cuidará en sus trabajos y descubrimientos, con especial atención cuando bordean ciertos campos minados, no los de espoletas explosivas, sino de los que se esconden en su historia y sus secretos, que todos conocen, pero de los que nadie habla; y los que muchos preferirían olvidar.
La novela, contada por Duro, se desarrolla con una narración muy fluida y seguirá los acontecimientos de ese verano, que se irán alternando con la revelación gradual que aportan los recuerdos de otros tiempos vividos, y al igual que la recuperación de las figuras perdidas en la reposición y exposición de las cerámicas en el frente de la casa o en la fuente, se irán reconstruyendo con mucha pericia las historias imbricadas, los secretos, los horrores, los miedos, en un pueblo amenazado por sus fantasmas, y la posible reaparición del pasado.
Una muy buena novela, con una muy buena narración, que por momentos corta el aliento, y una construcción artesanal del descubrimiento de esos pasados, que van tomando forma como una figura en la alfombra, y que ayudan a entender mejor este presente.
Aminatta Forna nació en Escocia en 1964, y se crio en Senegal, donde su padre se desempeñó como médico y político hasta su detención y posterior asesinato; y posteriormente en Escocia, la patria de sus madre; actualmente alterna su vida entre ambos países. Esta es su primera novela fuera de su zona de confort.
PD. Al terminar de leer esta novela, retomé la lectura de Zorro, de Dubravka Ugresic, y en la anécdota en la que viaja a su nueva casa en un pueblo croata, mencionada al comienzo de la reseña, encuentra a un hombre que se ha ocupado del cuidado de la casa en los años en que estuvo abandonada. Por un momento pensé que Aminatta podría haberse basado en esta historia para el inicio de su novela. La anécdota es anterior, y aunque recién fue publicada en Zorro cuatro años después de esta novela, podría haberla conocido, ya que incluye a Ugresic entre los autores a los que agradece (por la lectura de sus obras). Pudo haber habido influencias; aunque también podría ocurrir que la realidad es tan fuerte, que se impone a cualquiera con la sensibilidad para aprehenderla.
Leí recientemente una anécdota de la escritora Dubravka Ugrešić, en el que, al tomar posesión de una casa en un pueblo de Croacia, se sorprende de que, veinticinco años después de terminada la guerra de secesión yugoslava, aún queden campos minados, por donde no se puede cruzar ni tampoco se puede sembrar; en ellos sólo crecen flores silvestres.
Para la misma época, en el pueblo imaginario de Gost (sin relación con el término ghost, fantasma), y sí en cambio con el término guest (invitado, huésped), el lugareño Duro ve la llegada de una familia de ingleses para ocupar su nueva casa en las afueras del pueblo. Él conoce esa casa, cercana a la suya, y se ha ocupado de evitar su excesivo deterioro en los años de abandono. Parco y prudente, se acerca a dar la bienvenida y ofrecer sus servicios, en caso de que lo requirieran, iniciando un vínculo que se afianzará durante ese verano.
Como buen conocedor del pueblo, los acompañará y cuidará en sus trabajos y descubrimientos, con especial atención cuando bordean ciertos campos minados, no los de espoletas explosivas, sino de los que se esconden en su historia y sus secretos, que todos conocen, pero de los que nadie habla; y los que muchos preferirían olvidar.
La novela, contada por Duro, se desarrolla con una narración muy fluida y seguirá los acontecimientos de ese verano, que se irán alternando con la revelación gradual que aportan los recuerdos de otros tiempos vividos, y al igual que la recuperación de las figuras perdidas en la reposición y exposición de las cerámicas en el frente de la casa o en la fuente, se irán reconstruyendo con mucha pericia las historias imbricadas, los secretos, los horrores, los miedos, en un pueblo amenazado por sus fantasmas, y la posible reaparición del pasado.
Una muy buena novela, con una muy buena narración, que por momentos corta el aliento, y una construcción artesanal del descubrimiento de esos pasados, que van tomando forma como una figura en la alfombra, y que ayudan a entender mejor este presente.
Aminatta Forna nació en Escocia en 1964, y se crio en Senegal, donde su padre se desempeñó como médico y político hasta su detención y posterior asesinato; y posteriormente en Escocia, la patria de sus madre; actualmente alterna su vida entre ambos países. Esta es su primera novela fuera de su zona de confort.
PD. Al terminar de leer esta novela, retomé la lectura de Zorro, de Dubravka Ugresic, y en la anécdota en la que viaja a su nueva casa en un pueblo croata, mencionada al comienzo de la reseña, encuentra a un hombre que se ha ocupado del cuidado de la casa en los años en que estuvo abandonada. Por un momento pensé que Aminatta podría haberse basado en esta historia para el inicio de su novela. La anécdota es anterior, y aunque recién fue publicada en Zorro cuatro años después de esta novela, podría haberla conocido, ya que incluye a Ugresic entre los autores a los que agradece (por la lectura de sus obras). Pudo haber habido influencias; aunque también podría ocurrir que la realidad es tan fuerte, que se impone a cualquiera con la sensibilidad para aprehenderla.
August 16, 2021
Duro is a handyman living in a small Croatian village. He is hired by Laura, an English woman whose family has purchased a vacation home in the area. The story is told in first person by Duro. It is about an outsider, Laura, coming to a place where she and her family are not familiar with the history, and expecting to have a "nice family holiday," not recognizing that the area is still recovering from trauma. The arrival of these outsiders is the catalyst for Duro to revisit his memories, which he has suppressed. It gradually changes into a tale of war and betrayal.
It is a character study of what happens to traumatized people after war, where people chose sides, pitting neighbor against neighbor, and resulting in lingering aftereffects. It may be a good idea to read up on the history of the Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian wars beforehand, if you are not already familiar with it, since the author does not provide many details.
It is a slowly developing story, where the reader gradually becomes aware of Duro’s past. This method is effective in spurring the reader’s curiosity. I very much enjoy Aminatta Forna’s writing style. She has previously explored similar themes in another part of the world (Sierra Leone).
Forna is one of my favorite authors. I can also recommend:
- The Memory of Love - 5 stars- My Review
- Happiness - 4 stars - My Review
- The Window Seat: Notes from a Life in Motion - 4 stars - My Review
- Ancestor Stones: A Novel - 4 stars - My Review
- The Devil that Danced on the Water: A Daughter's Quest - 4 stars - My Review
It is a character study of what happens to traumatized people after war, where people chose sides, pitting neighbor against neighbor, and resulting in lingering aftereffects. It may be a good idea to read up on the history of the Bosnian/Serbian/Croatian wars beforehand, if you are not already familiar with it, since the author does not provide many details.
It is a slowly developing story, where the reader gradually becomes aware of Duro’s past. This method is effective in spurring the reader’s curiosity. I very much enjoy Aminatta Forna’s writing style. She has previously explored similar themes in another part of the world (Sierra Leone).
Forna is one of my favorite authors. I can also recommend:
- The Memory of Love - 5 stars- My Review
- Happiness - 4 stars - My Review
- The Window Seat: Notes from a Life in Motion - 4 stars - My Review
- Ancestor Stones: A Novel - 4 stars - My Review
- The Devil that Danced on the Water: A Daughter's Quest - 4 stars - My Review
July 28, 2013
Author Aminatta Forna was born in Scotland, but spent much of her childhood overseas. Her previous two novels The Memory of Love and Ancestor Stones have won numerous awards and her memoir The Devil that Danced on the Water was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson prize. She will be one of the panel of judges for the 2013 Man Booker Prize.
The Hired Man is her latest novel and is set in a fictional town named Gost in present-day Croatia. Laura is an Englishwoman with two teenaged children and an absent second husband. They have bought an old house on the outskirts of the town which they intend to renovate and keep as a holiday home. The narrator, Duro Kolak, is a local man. He is good with his hands and is the only person in the town who speaks English. Laura hires him to do some maintenance and renovation, but is unaware of Duro’s personal past connection to the house. In fact Duro knows the house so well that when he climbs the wooden stairs he automatically avoids the steps that creak.
Anton Chekov once said that if there was a gun in first chapter then it had to go off by the second or third chapter. In The Hired Man the gun is introduced in the very first paragraph, but the reader has to wait quite a bit longer than Chekov advised before the shooting starts. In fact the reader spends quite a long time waiting for anything to happen.
Duro is a marksman who never misses his shot. Most of the shooting is at the deer that shelter in the woods on the surrounding hills, but the past is slowly revealed.
There is a sense of something lurking beneath the surface throughout this book and the poignant exchanged glances and charged exchanges among Duro and the townsfolk conceal more than they reveal. Laura is blissfully unaware of all this. Where she sees beautiful pastures full of wild flowers Duro sees fields have been left fallow for fear of unexploded landmines. Much is hidden beneath the surface. Crumbling plaster on the façade of the house reveals a hidden mosaic. A fountain is discovered beneath the weeds in the garden. An old car is concealed under a dusty tarpaulin. With Duro’s help these things are restored and he uses Laura and her family to recreate elements of the past the significance of which only the locals will understand.
The graveyard is laid out like a mirror of the town with rows and zones for the rich and the poor. But even the dead are haunted by the past and some of the graves and their stones have been blown apart by a bomb. The Orthodox church is unused and abandoned because the people who prayed there ‘went away.’ There are gaps in the village, like the abandoned bakery. There are shops that Duro boycotts, driving far out of his way rather than to give them any business.
Over the summer Laura and her family gradually come to suspect that all in Gost is not what it appears, but they never truly discover the truth and any time things get uncomfortable Duro is always there to smooth things out and feed them fictions that will make them feel safe.
While skillful and mastered, the writing is somewhat cold and distant. Like the damaged narrator, the writer herself has had her fair share of tragedy (her father was hanged for treason in Sierra Leone when she was eleven years old) and there is something staid and clinical about the style that keeps the reader at arm’s length. There is plenty of precision but very little poetry, and what little music there is in the writing has all the appeal of the dull rhythmic ticking of a metronome. The cardboard-cut-out characters feature in the story, but they are never really part of the story. They are neither pleasant nor unpleasant, but if the truth be told, apart from the narrator it is difficult to feel anything for any of them.
At times the narrator slips into the second person, addressing the reader directly, but it happens so infrequently that when it does it jars and rends the otherwise seamless fabric of the story and reveals it for the artifice it is.
What is very well done though is the way the writer depicts the after-effects of the unspeakable, or how people continue their lives despite the awful knowledge of what has been done by ordinary neighbours to other neighbours; how a simple thing like using a different word for ‘bread’ can lead to an unmarked mass grave and how people learn to live with their ghosts and with themselves.
It is an uncomfortable and edgy book that derives its strength by working its way around things rather than facing or stating them directly, much like the cryptic conversations between Duro and his childhood pals who he wishes dead but has no wish to kill, even though he reveals that killing is something that comes very easily and naturally to him. The deer he kills out of necessity, the soldiers he kills, not because his life is threatened in any way, but just because he can. Despite this chilling side of his character he is the one who ultimately finds the strength to forgive his neighbours and former friends for what they have done. Though he isn’t above using Laura and her family to thumb his nose at them and taunt them for what they have done.
The writer finally gets into her stride in the last few chapters, which are the most fluid and readable of the whole book, and it ends more or less satisfyingly.
August 17, 2013
I don't say this often, but this book left me breathless.
According to the notes, Aminatta Forn has not lived in Croatia, but has lived in other troublesome parts of the world. In The Hired Man, she creates such a vivid landscape that it makes it hard to believe she wasn't there. The conflict of the early 90s in the former Yugoslavia, a civilized country that had recently hosted the Olympics, was a tourist destination of surpassing beauty, is given a human face. Duro, the narrator, the eponymous hired man who avails himself to an English family purchasing a second home in what is now Croatia, with each gutter he clears or repair he'd makes, memories of a time long suppressed in memory is unearthed, and as the house begins to come to life it raises emotions in the town with varying results. I can not in aall fairness tell more without ruining the reading experience for the next person,
According to the notes, Aminatta Forn has not lived in Croatia, but has lived in other troublesome parts of the world. In The Hired Man, she creates such a vivid landscape that it makes it hard to believe she wasn't there. The conflict of the early 90s in the former Yugoslavia, a civilized country that had recently hosted the Olympics, was a tourist destination of surpassing beauty, is given a human face. Duro, the narrator, the eponymous hired man who avails himself to an English family purchasing a second home in what is now Croatia, with each gutter he clears or repair he'd makes, memories of a time long suppressed in memory is unearthed, and as the house begins to come to life it raises emotions in the town with varying results. I can not in aall fairness tell more without ruining the reading experience for the next person,
June 1, 2016
I certainly liked the ambition of this story - the very slow reveal of what happened in a village called Gost during the break up of Yugoslavia in the 90s. It is told on a very personal level through the eyes of the enigmatic narrator, Duro. It is a powerful and sad story but although it started so strongly the middle section really dragged and the whole was only redeemed in the last few pages. It is hard to be so middling on a book that tackles these themes of war and loss and betrayal but there was something lacking in this which is hard to define.
March 7, 2017
Ratings (1 to 5)
Writing: 5
Plot: 5
Characters: 5
Emotional impact: 5
Overall rating: 5
Notes
Favorite character(s): Grace
Favorite quotes:
"How do you trace your way back to the place where a feeling changed, the course of a friendship turned a corner and became something else?" p. 83
"I guessed that Laura was one of those people who preferred the music of a lie to the discordance of truth." p. 92
"There's nothing new about this story of ours, such things happen. Love misses its mark, arrives too early or too late." p. 156
"...she frowns and chooses her words carefully, as if she's worried about their effect, as if this thing, whatever it is that she's afraid of, which right now is made of smoke and dust, will crystallise and harden by being put into words, be made real, like an illness or a death pronounced by a doctor." p. 228
Writing: 5
Plot: 5
Characters: 5
Emotional impact: 5
Overall rating: 5
Notes
Favorite character(s): Grace
Favorite quotes:
"How do you trace your way back to the place where a feeling changed, the course of a friendship turned a corner and became something else?" p. 83
"I guessed that Laura was one of those people who preferred the music of a lie to the discordance of truth." p. 92
"There's nothing new about this story of ours, such things happen. Love misses its mark, arrives too early or too late." p. 156
"...she frowns and chooses her words carefully, as if she's worried about their effect, as if this thing, whatever it is that she's afraid of, which right now is made of smoke and dust, will crystallise and harden by being put into words, be made real, like an illness or a death pronounced by a doctor." p. 228
August 20, 2015
One of the best books I have read in a while. Masterful storytelling and excellent writing reveal to us the story of a small fictional town (Gost) in Croatia years after a bloody civil conflict. The title of the town is clever in that its pronunciation "ghost" describes what the book is about - the deep dark secrets and hauntings that hang over the town and its remaining inhabitants - and the word "Gost" which means "guest" or "visitor" describes the vehicle of the story - the arrival of outsiders that is the catalyst for the eruption of memories by the locals.
The narrator is a quiet, honorable man who is hired as a handyman for the newcomers and it is through his memories that the past is slowly revealed until it reaches a feverish pitch (the last 1/3 of the book was a "can't put the book down" story).
Two more thoughts: 1. This book focuses not so much on the war itself, but on how it affects each and every member of a community. It shows us how some react by leaving and others by staying; some by burying secrets and some by not wanting them to ever be buried too deeply. Our main character, who desperately wants to exact revenge does something even more difficult: He restrains himself from doing it, but makes it his lifelong goal to keep that threat hanging.
2.The writing style was fabulous: The present story of the newcomers to town is told in a typical past tense "Laura came to Gost in the last week of July..." (Laura is the newcomer/outsider) and the past is told to us in present tense "I walk home slowly. Across the fields the houses of Gost are hidden by the darkness: not a single light, not a single sound..." This manner of storytelling may seem confusing at first, but I thought it was a great way to add tension; the past is the suspenseful part of the story and by reading it in the present tense, you are right there with all of the horrible action.
Highly recommend this one.
The narrator is a quiet, honorable man who is hired as a handyman for the newcomers and it is through his memories that the past is slowly revealed until it reaches a feverish pitch (the last 1/3 of the book was a "can't put the book down" story).
Two more thoughts: 1. This book focuses not so much on the war itself, but on how it affects each and every member of a community. It shows us how some react by leaving and others by staying; some by burying secrets and some by not wanting them to ever be buried too deeply. Our main character, who desperately wants to exact revenge does something even more difficult: He restrains himself from doing it, but makes it his lifelong goal to keep that threat hanging.
2.The writing style was fabulous: The present story of the newcomers to town is told in a typical past tense "Laura came to Gost in the last week of July..." (Laura is the newcomer/outsider) and the past is told to us in present tense "I walk home slowly. Across the fields the houses of Gost are hidden by the darkness: not a single light, not a single sound..." This manner of storytelling may seem confusing at first, but I thought it was a great way to add tension; the past is the suspenseful part of the story and by reading it in the present tense, you are right there with all of the horrible action.
Highly recommend this one.
May 16, 2013
An English family take a house in Croatia, planning to spend the summer doing it up before selling it on, apparently oblivious to the horrors that had happened around them not so very long ago - or are they? The pre-teen daughter knows more than she lets on to her mother, or does her mother simply not want to know? Duro - the local man hired to renovate a house he knows too well - isn't telling, and will never tell. He, like everyone around him, has wrapped himself in lies to protect him from nightmares. The family come to rely heavily on practical, capable Duro. A love story seems to be developing – or is that all in Duro’s head? What happens in Duro's head is the story. The character development is wonderful, as a taciturn, damaged man reluctantly gives up his story.
There is nothing surprising or remarkable in the plot, the characters are what makes this tale: Duro especially, but also the members of English family, who are instantly recognisable and real. The story is slow and all too predictable - we all know what happened in the Balkans and how this tale of buried memories will end. The Hired Man is about the slow reveal: the parts the various protagonists played - like a striptease, a dance of the seven veils, like peeling a scab from an old wound. It's about a cast of characters trapped in a life where someone hit pause button over two decades ago. Everyone lies: to his neighbours and to himself. No one dares speak out or tell what they know about each other. Everyone lives with a past like a loose thread no one dares pull.
There is nothing surprising or remarkable in the plot, the characters are what makes this tale: Duro especially, but also the members of English family, who are instantly recognisable and real. The story is slow and all too predictable - we all know what happened in the Balkans and how this tale of buried memories will end. The Hired Man is about the slow reveal: the parts the various protagonists played - like a striptease, a dance of the seven veils, like peeling a scab from an old wound. It's about a cast of characters trapped in a life where someone hit pause button over two decades ago. Everyone lies: to his neighbours and to himself. No one dares speak out or tell what they know about each other. Everyone lives with a past like a loose thread no one dares pull.
June 26, 2018
I picked up this book in order to learn more about Croatia- there aren't a ton of books out there readily available on this subject.
I probably should have done a bit more research. Or the author should have. She is trying to get at the horrors of the Balkan wars, and has a tragic story herself, but the book felt like it was trying very hard to be an allegory. Duro's name, the village Gost, she's clearly telegraphing with these names what we should be thinking about.
The writing itself felt quite distant and didn't draw me into the book. I ended up both not caring about the characters (hence not finishing the book) and doubting the writer's expertise in this particular history. If I can't trust the author, or if the author obviously doesn't trust me, I'm out.
I probably should have done a bit more research. Or the author should have. She is trying to get at the horrors of the Balkan wars, and has a tragic story herself, but the book felt like it was trying very hard to be an allegory. Duro's name, the village Gost, she's clearly telegraphing with these names what we should be thinking about.
The writing itself felt quite distant and didn't draw me into the book. I ended up both not caring about the characters (hence not finishing the book) and doubting the writer's expertise in this particular history. If I can't trust the author, or if the author obviously doesn't trust me, I'm out.
March 31, 2020
More than a 4 star but not quite there as a 5 star for me. And I think that is my problem not the book’s.
For me it was such an interesting look at the distance that needs to be created by a person who went through so much trauma and continues to live in the town where it happened.
Sometimes I wanted to scream at Duro because of his lack of emotion but by the end I understood that this was a result of the distance he had to create in order to survive his every day.
Such a powerful lesson and told so well through great development of characters and this heavy weight of secrets throughout the book.
Great read.
For me it was such an interesting look at the distance that needs to be created by a person who went through so much trauma and continues to live in the town where it happened.
Sometimes I wanted to scream at Duro because of his lack of emotion but by the end I understood that this was a result of the distance he had to create in order to survive his every day.
Such a powerful lesson and told so well through great development of characters and this heavy weight of secrets throughout the book.
Great read.
October 8, 2025
I learned a lot about the Croatian War of Independence and the Serbian war with Bosnia, not because of this book, but in spite of it. I found the lack of real context on the actions of the characters frustrating which prompted me to read up about the wars.
I am currently living on Croatia and have spoken to a few locals (very briefly and with caution) about Yugoslavia and, understandably, the older generation is not very forthcoming. The younger generation is fiercely patriotic, which led to more lively discussions.
I think my expectations were very high and I was not prepared for the slow pace.
In general, the writing was good but there was a lot that was left unexplained. It felt as if the long-standing feud between Duro and his childhood friend was blown out of proportion and the lack of insight into the parts that dealt with the war left me wanting more.
The change in timelines between the present and past was also indistinguishable from one sentence to the next, making for an erratic reading experience.
I am currently living on Croatia and have spoken to a few locals (very briefly and with caution) about Yugoslavia and, understandably, the older generation is not very forthcoming. The younger generation is fiercely patriotic, which led to more lively discussions.
I think my expectations were very high and I was not prepared for the slow pace.
In general, the writing was good but there was a lot that was left unexplained. It felt as if the long-standing feud between Duro and his childhood friend was blown out of proportion and the lack of insight into the parts that dealt with the war left me wanting more.
The change in timelines between the present and past was also indistinguishable from one sentence to the next, making for an erratic reading experience.
April 26, 2015
The town of Gost, Croatia. Post-Yugoslavia, post-war, and it's no coincidence that the name sounds a bit like "ghost." Everyone left is haunted but not really talking about it. An English family moves into a house that has been vacated, and hires a local to help fix it up. The reader learns more about the story of the man and the town as he writes it up and remembers bits and pieces.
Definitely a slow burn. Most of the novel is taken up with Duro and his interactions with the English characters, but when you find more out about his story, you shamefacedly wish to go back to the more idyllic existence of construction projects and cranky teenagers.
This was a replacement book for my international book club, and I might have more to add after we discuss it tomorrow.
"The way the English saw it, the past was always better. But in this country our love of the past is a great deal less, unless it is a very distant past indeed, the kind nobody alive can remember, a past transformed into a song or a poem. We tolerate the present, but what we love is the future, which is about as far away from the past as it is possible to be."
"Every few months a newspaper article or something else kicked something off, put people on edge, set them talking. The same could happen anywhere. The knowledge was a shivering child locked in an upstairs room. The dark child haunted our dreams, invaded the places in our minds even we didn't dare go."
Definitely a slow burn. Most of the novel is taken up with Duro and his interactions with the English characters, but when you find more out about his story, you shamefacedly wish to go back to the more idyllic existence of construction projects and cranky teenagers.
This was a replacement book for my international book club, and I might have more to add after we discuss it tomorrow.
"The way the English saw it, the past was always better. But in this country our love of the past is a great deal less, unless it is a very distant past indeed, the kind nobody alive can remember, a past transformed into a song or a poem. We tolerate the present, but what we love is the future, which is about as far away from the past as it is possible to be."
"Every few months a newspaper article or something else kicked something off, put people on edge, set them talking. The same could happen anywhere. The knowledge was a shivering child locked in an upstairs room. The dark child haunted our dreams, invaded the places in our minds even we didn't dare go."
August 13, 2022
I loved other books by this author,but this one didn't work for me,right from the start.The voice is all wrong;it feels clearly female,and it's not supposed to be,so it grates so much you can''t get past that.
January 7, 2020
4.5 stars. Forna writes so beautifully.
December 29, 2013
Anne Lamott once stated that "If your narrator [fascinates] … , it isn't … going to matter if nothing much happens for a long time." She might have been writing about Aminatta Forta's The Hired Man.
The book opens thusly: At the time of writing I am forty-six years old. My name is Duro Kolak.
Kolak lives in a Croation village named Gost. An English lady and her two teen-agers--a boy and a girl--arrive to take up residence in an old house he has been tending to. She hires him to do repairs. He describes what he does in meticulous detail. The materials he uses. Where he gets them. He also describes his daily bachelor routines, his life in a nearby stone cottage where he lives with his two dogs. He hunts deer. Takes some coffee or beer at a local tavern. We learn a bit--but only a bit--about his past. How he grew up in the village, then spent some time on the coast, only to return to the small backwater.
All the while, the repairs progress, as does his friendship with the little family. Still, though, you'd have to describe it as cordial rather than intimate.
Then things do begin to happen. Little things. A mosaic is discovered under some plaster, a mosaic that disturbs someone in town. Duro takes the family to the coast to buy some needed tiles. Memories emerge. He did a lot more than "spend some time" on the coast, and what he did and with whom begins to seep into the narrative.
I'm resisting urge to reveal more here because the process by which Forta pulls aside the layers of gauze that reveal the many stories behind the Duro's story is such an intense experience that it would be like filling you with a meal without giving you a chance to taste it. And this is a meal you need to savor. Bite by amazing bite.
The book opens thusly: At the time of writing I am forty-six years old. My name is Duro Kolak.
Kolak lives in a Croation village named Gost. An English lady and her two teen-agers--a boy and a girl--arrive to take up residence in an old house he has been tending to. She hires him to do repairs. He describes what he does in meticulous detail. The materials he uses. Where he gets them. He also describes his daily bachelor routines, his life in a nearby stone cottage where he lives with his two dogs. He hunts deer. Takes some coffee or beer at a local tavern. We learn a bit--but only a bit--about his past. How he grew up in the village, then spent some time on the coast, only to return to the small backwater.
All the while, the repairs progress, as does his friendship with the little family. Still, though, you'd have to describe it as cordial rather than intimate.
Then things do begin to happen. Little things. A mosaic is discovered under some plaster, a mosaic that disturbs someone in town. Duro takes the family to the coast to buy some needed tiles. Memories emerge. He did a lot more than "spend some time" on the coast, and what he did and with whom begins to seep into the narrative.
I'm resisting urge to reveal more here because the process by which Forta pulls aside the layers of gauze that reveal the many stories behind the Duro's story is such an intense experience that it would be like filling you with a meal without giving you a chance to taste it. And this is a meal you need to savor. Bite by amazing bite.
May 26, 2013
This book started so promisingly but lost its way. A naive Englishwoman buys a run-down house in what was once Yugoslavia with plans to convert it into a holiday home. Duro, her helpful handyman has many secrets about the house, his love-life and the town in which the tale is set. He has also lived through the most brutal conflict in Europe since the Second World War, the war in which the wonderfully euphemistic term for genocide, 'ethnic cleansing', entered our collective vocabulary. We learn a lot about Duro's lost loves and how to hunt deer but so little about the horrors of civil war. Just when the book should have been setting the scene for the atrocities that burst onto our TV screens twenty years ago we are taken on a tour of Pag, where Duro spent some time while finding himself. Now, the island is a Croatian tourist attraction and I felt the author had visited Pag and wanted to write about it, determined to get it in somehow, but maybe it should have been called 'Pad'.
Only at the end of the book is the ethnic cleansing referred to and even then it is not clear who is killing whom. It seems that the author is frightened of naming names, whether Serb or Croat, or identifying the religious divisions of the region. In fact, it is only in the acknowledgements that she mentions the Republic of Serbian Krajina and I feel that she has missed a wonderful opportunity to remind the world of what happened in the Balkans during the 1990s and certainly does nothing to explain why. The result is a chic-lit sheep dressed in wolf's clothing.
Only at the end of the book is the ethnic cleansing referred to and even then it is not clear who is killing whom. It seems that the author is frightened of naming names, whether Serb or Croat, or identifying the religious divisions of the region. In fact, it is only in the acknowledgements that she mentions the Republic of Serbian Krajina and I feel that she has missed a wonderful opportunity to remind the world of what happened in the Balkans during the 1990s and certainly does nothing to explain why. The result is a chic-lit sheep dressed in wolf's clothing.
April 13, 2021
Character-led and beautifully written, with a pace that slowly and steadily builds tension. Duro is an odd-job man who is hired to help renovate the blue house on the edge of a Croatian village after it is bought by Laura. She arrives for the summer with her two teenage children, all of them unaware of the history of the house, the land and the people. As Duro helps them reveal a mosaic of a bird on the front of their house, what happened to the previous occupant of the blue house, (who was Duro's first love), is also slowly revealed to the reader. Forna writes about the lasting effects of civil war in a very understated way until we almost learn what happened by stealth. Recommended.
July 20, 2016
I thought this was a masterfully told tale. One of my favs for the year.
Written by a female author Scottish-born of Sierra Leone parentage, it tells the story of Duro and his experiences of the recent Balkan Wars.
It is so subtly written, it is an onion of a book - layers are peeled away revealing Duro's war-time experiences and how he deals with it in the post-War days. Brilliant.
Written by a female author Scottish-born of Sierra Leone parentage, it tells the story of Duro and his experiences of the recent Balkan Wars.
It is so subtly written, it is an onion of a book - layers are peeled away revealing Duro's war-time experiences and how he deals with it in the post-War days. Brilliant.
October 10, 2015
That Duro Can Do Just About Anything
Almost halfway through The Hired Man, I came across a wonderful, succinct paragraph describing the fictional rural town of Gost as a reflection of its cemetery:
“The graveyard is just like Gost, with rows of tombs instead of houses and paths in the place of streets. There are different neighbourhoods for the rich and the poor and for people who worship in one church and people who worship in another. Everything you need to know about Gost is here in the cemetery.”
I reread that section several times, and all I could think was, “Why wasn’t this used as the opener of the book?”
The novel opens with its narrator/author introducing himself: Duro Kolak, a middle-aged Croatian hunter who has lived in Gost for almost his whole life. His account begins with the arrival of an English family that has purchased a summer home to renovate and flip. The family consists of the mother, Laura and her two teenagers, Matthew, and Grace. Looking to make some money, Duro starts helping them with their restoration. His modern interactions with the family stir up memories from decades past and give Duro a chance to more honestly confront tragic events in his personal history.
This book is more about its style than its story. I have to admit that it’s a bold style, but for a number of reasons, I couldn’t quite get lost in it. This is the first work I’ve read by Aminatta Forna, and she’s clearly a great writer. Her methods of describing environments (both physical and social) evoke strong feelings of presence. She’s not so descriptive that I “see” everything in sharp focus, but she offers enough, just honestly enough, that I frequently feel as if I’m recalling a half-forgotten memory of my own. I’ve never even been to Europe, but having read this novel, some part of my brain is convinced that I remember Gost.
Unfortunately, Forna herself doesn’t write this book; Duro does. And while he’s a great help fixing up a house, he’s not much of a writer. The narrative is apparently a manuscript, though I’m never quite sure for whom he’s writing; he adds too many details to be addressing a local and too few for a newcomer. Then again, Duro has lived alone for a long time. Perhaps he’s not a great communicator. He’s definitely not a strong choice for a storyteller. He vacillates between serious and sappy like some kind of Virginia Woolf / Nicholas Sparks hybrid.
His text reads like a first draft or maybe even a first dictation—disordered and inconsistent. For the first two-thirds of the book, it feels very much like he’s trying to tell two stories at the same time, and each one is hindering the other. This improves vastly in the final third, but it’s a trial to get that far. His recollections move seamlessly through time so that in once sentence he’ll be talking about weeks earlier, and in the next, decades before that. It’s almost like a stream-of-conscious thing, but instead of moving between the perspectives of different people, we’re moving through the perspectives of a single person at different points in his life.
On its own, that’s not bad; it’s often compelling, but it demands your attention. If you let your mind wander like this was casual reading, you’ll easily lose the decade Duro’s describing. After a few backtracks, you’ll be forced to concentrate, but by reading more closely you’ll also find some big problems with Duro’s account.
First of all, he’s not consistent with his tense. All of the recent events—the family moving in and the renovation—he writes in past tense. His earlier memories, he writes in historic present…most of the time. Sometimes he writes them all in past tense, sometimes he introduces them in past tense and transitions to historic present, and sometimes he switches back and forth mid-flashback. If there was a reason for this, I missed it.
Second, Duro is not very likeable or believable. Under normal circumstances, I’m okay with unlikeable characters in stories, but only if the author is clear that the portrayal of the character is intended as unflattering. Duro spends a lot of lines complimenting himself, including information I had a hard time believing he could have, and claiming to have performed feats which seem physically impossible and logistically unreasonable.
Somehow, he manages to include a lengthy monolog by Laura in his writing. He doesn’t summarize what she said; he quotes it verbatim. How? Furthermore, how likely is it that a rural Croat who lives for two winters on frozen goat in a home formerly inhabited by pigs would know what quadrilles are? If you’re reading the text closely enough to keep track of where you are in time, you’re likely to get snagged on details like this.
Duro recalls a shooting contest he had with a former friend in which he put five shots through the exact same holes as his opponent. They only realize this when they walk close enough to the target to see that there are only five holes, which forces me to wonder: Putting aside the fact that the lightest of winds and slightest of manufacturing defects in ammunition will destroy a bullet’s accuracy on that scale—if they had to walk closer to see how many holes there were, how could Duro have sighted on them when he was shooting?
The third problem with paying close attention to Duro is that you’ll realize his descriptions of everyone, especially Grace and Matthew, are awful and he never apologizes for it. If a different narrator were describing Duro’s reactions to these people before he got to know them, that would be one thing, but he’s recalling people he’s grown close to over several weeks. Maybe he wants to be really honest about how he initially felt about these strangers, but why wouldn’t he make it clear that he’s since changed his mind?
He judges Matthew for being unhappy with his involuntary transplantation for the summer to a country where he doesn’t speak the language, has no friends, and can’t even get online. Isn’t “unhappy” the most predictable response for a seventeen-year-old in that situation? He also shares the following when he describes having a meal with the family:
“Grace ate with gusto, keeping an eye on the food, ready to pounce in case it scuttled away. In between mouthfuls she sucked her drink noisily through the straw.”
I almost thought I was going to forgive an adult character for describing a teenager this way when a few paragraphs later he yells at her brother for calling her “fatso,” but his narrative never compares his own judgment with Matthew’s. I don’t think it even occurs to him to do so. I can’t even imagine why someone would admit to thinking such awful things if he weren’t doing it in the interest of demonstrating some development in his maturity.
Throughout the novel, I had a swelling thought that was my firm belief by the conclusion: This could be a really interesting story about entering a strange place and meeting strange people and uncovering their history to re-contextualize the present. Anyone who’s been married can tell you that you marry the other person’s family, culture, and entire life history even if you don’t learn any of it until after saying, “I do.” Furthermore, spouses know that discoveries in this vein are not always clean and pleasant.
Gost and Duro are a place and a person with mystery in their history that would make for an interesting story, but Duro is not the right person to tell it. This should have been a story detailing Laura, Grace, and Matthew’s discovery of Duro’s past. Instead it’s an indulgent, inconsistent story about believable events told in an unbelievable way.
Almost halfway through The Hired Man, I came across a wonderful, succinct paragraph describing the fictional rural town of Gost as a reflection of its cemetery:
“The graveyard is just like Gost, with rows of tombs instead of houses and paths in the place of streets. There are different neighbourhoods for the rich and the poor and for people who worship in one church and people who worship in another. Everything you need to know about Gost is here in the cemetery.”
I reread that section several times, and all I could think was, “Why wasn’t this used as the opener of the book?”
The novel opens with its narrator/author introducing himself: Duro Kolak, a middle-aged Croatian hunter who has lived in Gost for almost his whole life. His account begins with the arrival of an English family that has purchased a summer home to renovate and flip. The family consists of the mother, Laura and her two teenagers, Matthew, and Grace. Looking to make some money, Duro starts helping them with their restoration. His modern interactions with the family stir up memories from decades past and give Duro a chance to more honestly confront tragic events in his personal history.
This book is more about its style than its story. I have to admit that it’s a bold style, but for a number of reasons, I couldn’t quite get lost in it. This is the first work I’ve read by Aminatta Forna, and she’s clearly a great writer. Her methods of describing environments (both physical and social) evoke strong feelings of presence. She’s not so descriptive that I “see” everything in sharp focus, but she offers enough, just honestly enough, that I frequently feel as if I’m recalling a half-forgotten memory of my own. I’ve never even been to Europe, but having read this novel, some part of my brain is convinced that I remember Gost.
Unfortunately, Forna herself doesn’t write this book; Duro does. And while he’s a great help fixing up a house, he’s not much of a writer. The narrative is apparently a manuscript, though I’m never quite sure for whom he’s writing; he adds too many details to be addressing a local and too few for a newcomer. Then again, Duro has lived alone for a long time. Perhaps he’s not a great communicator. He’s definitely not a strong choice for a storyteller. He vacillates between serious and sappy like some kind of Virginia Woolf / Nicholas Sparks hybrid.
His text reads like a first draft or maybe even a first dictation—disordered and inconsistent. For the first two-thirds of the book, it feels very much like he’s trying to tell two stories at the same time, and each one is hindering the other. This improves vastly in the final third, but it’s a trial to get that far. His recollections move seamlessly through time so that in once sentence he’ll be talking about weeks earlier, and in the next, decades before that. It’s almost like a stream-of-conscious thing, but instead of moving between the perspectives of different people, we’re moving through the perspectives of a single person at different points in his life.
On its own, that’s not bad; it’s often compelling, but it demands your attention. If you let your mind wander like this was casual reading, you’ll easily lose the decade Duro’s describing. After a few backtracks, you’ll be forced to concentrate, but by reading more closely you’ll also find some big problems with Duro’s account.
First of all, he’s not consistent with his tense. All of the recent events—the family moving in and the renovation—he writes in past tense. His earlier memories, he writes in historic present…most of the time. Sometimes he writes them all in past tense, sometimes he introduces them in past tense and transitions to historic present, and sometimes he switches back and forth mid-flashback. If there was a reason for this, I missed it.
Second, Duro is not very likeable or believable. Under normal circumstances, I’m okay with unlikeable characters in stories, but only if the author is clear that the portrayal of the character is intended as unflattering. Duro spends a lot of lines complimenting himself, including information I had a hard time believing he could have, and claiming to have performed feats which seem physically impossible and logistically unreasonable.
Somehow, he manages to include a lengthy monolog by Laura in his writing. He doesn’t summarize what she said; he quotes it verbatim. How? Furthermore, how likely is it that a rural Croat who lives for two winters on frozen goat in a home formerly inhabited by pigs would know what quadrilles are? If you’re reading the text closely enough to keep track of where you are in time, you’re likely to get snagged on details like this.
Duro recalls a shooting contest he had with a former friend in which he put five shots through the exact same holes as his opponent. They only realize this when they walk close enough to the target to see that there are only five holes, which forces me to wonder: Putting aside the fact that the lightest of winds and slightest of manufacturing defects in ammunition will destroy a bullet’s accuracy on that scale—if they had to walk closer to see how many holes there were, how could Duro have sighted on them when he was shooting?
The third problem with paying close attention to Duro is that you’ll realize his descriptions of everyone, especially Grace and Matthew, are awful and he never apologizes for it. If a different narrator were describing Duro’s reactions to these people before he got to know them, that would be one thing, but he’s recalling people he’s grown close to over several weeks. Maybe he wants to be really honest about how he initially felt about these strangers, but why wouldn’t he make it clear that he’s since changed his mind?
He judges Matthew for being unhappy with his involuntary transplantation for the summer to a country where he doesn’t speak the language, has no friends, and can’t even get online. Isn’t “unhappy” the most predictable response for a seventeen-year-old in that situation? He also shares the following when he describes having a meal with the family:
“Grace ate with gusto, keeping an eye on the food, ready to pounce in case it scuttled away. In between mouthfuls she sucked her drink noisily through the straw.”
I almost thought I was going to forgive an adult character for describing a teenager this way when a few paragraphs later he yells at her brother for calling her “fatso,” but his narrative never compares his own judgment with Matthew’s. I don’t think it even occurs to him to do so. I can’t even imagine why someone would admit to thinking such awful things if he weren’t doing it in the interest of demonstrating some development in his maturity.
Throughout the novel, I had a swelling thought that was my firm belief by the conclusion: This could be a really interesting story about entering a strange place and meeting strange people and uncovering their history to re-contextualize the present. Anyone who’s been married can tell you that you marry the other person’s family, culture, and entire life history even if you don’t learn any of it until after saying, “I do.” Furthermore, spouses know that discoveries in this vein are not always clean and pleasant.
Gost and Duro are a place and a person with mystery in their history that would make for an interesting story, but Duro is not the right person to tell it. This should have been a story detailing Laura, Grace, and Matthew’s discovery of Duro’s past. Instead it’s an indulgent, inconsistent story about believable events told in an unbelievable way.
June 5, 2013
This is the sort of book that makes you neglect essentials,
chores like sleeping and going to work, snatching minutes here and there to keep absorbed in the writing and the story.
And then it makes you sad when it's all over. A true seduction.
There's a deceptive beauty to the writing which masks a story of the horrors of war as it is slowly revealed to the reader.
This story is imbedded in the sad history of the war in the former Yugoslavia, a story of tight communiies the secrets they hide.
This is a disconcerting story beautifully told.
chores like sleeping and going to work, snatching minutes here and there to keep absorbed in the writing and the story.
And then it makes you sad when it's all over. A true seduction.
There's a deceptive beauty to the writing which masks a story of the horrors of war as it is slowly revealed to the reader.
This story is imbedded in the sad history of the war in the former Yugoslavia, a story of tight communiies the secrets they hide.
This is a disconcerting story beautifully told.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 620 reviews