Batlava Lake

by Adam Mars-Jones

Pristina, Kosovo, 1999. Barry Ashton, recently divorced, has been deployed as a civil engineer attached to the Royal Engineers corps in the British Army. In an extraordinary feat of ventriloquism, Adam Mars-Jones constructs a literary story with a thoroughly unliterary narrator, and a narrative that is anything but comic through the medium of a character who, essentially, is. Exploring masculinity, class and identity, Batlava Lake is a brilliant story of men and war by one of Britain's most accomplished writers.

Genres: Fiction, War, Novella, British Literature, Ebooks, Literary Fiction

136 pages, Paperback

Published June 23, 2021

About the author

Adam Mars-Jones is a British writer and critic.

Reviews

[Henk · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well done in characterization of the narrator but with a payoff that comes too late, and is much to distant to the engineer we follow, to have an impact in my view
They’d had their lives taken away and not found a way back to them yet.

A very talkative Barry narrates his mission as an attached citizen and engineer in 1999’s Kosovo. There is a lot of boredom and horsing around, plus reflections on his failed marriage, but in the end the wartime trauma comes into focus a bit more. The narrator is excellently done, reminding me of the way David Mitchell conjures his working class characters through language in for instance Black Swan Green or more recently with Dean in Utopia Avenue, but the pay off in the end is just rather limited due to the distance of the transient narrator to the trauma of the country he is stationed in. I feel Adam Mars-Jones is definitely talented but I wanted more from Batlava Lake.

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Batlava Lake is narrated by Barry, a civil engineer, recalling his time in Pristina in Kosovo in 1999-2000, attached to a British Army unit sent in the aftermath of the Kosovan War to help with peacekeeping and reconstruction.

Mars-Jones gives him a distinctive narrative voice, in many respects blokish but actually something of a loner and very much not one of the lads as he explains at the start of his story:

Lake Batlava is beautiful. Deep, not exactly welcoming. I don’t expect the locals think it’s much like Loch Ness, but we did. I did. No legends about monsters, none that I heard of. But how would I get to hear about them anyway? I’d have to speak the language, and the Barry brain doesn’t do languages. Just doesn’t want to know. ‘Gut und Morgen’ is about as much as I can manage in foreign parts, doesn’t get you far in Kosovo. Plus we weren’t there as sightseers, though we saw some sights. We saw some sights.

Batlava Lake isn’t just a beauty spot, civic resource into the bargain. Natural lake but improved. Enhanced. Serves as the main reservoir for a capital city, for Pristina. More than Loch Ness can say for itself, monster or not!

When I first heard the name, like everyone else did, I thought it was the same as the cakey thing. The sticky layers – Greek, is it? Likely Greek. Bit sweet for me, wherever it comes from. Baklava. When I learned the proper name I used it, Batlava, though not everybody did. They stuck with what they knew, came in handy making silly jokes. Jokes about the Baklava Lake being fed by the River Ouzo. And so on – nearly funny. Not quite.

Even if I bust a gut laughing at their jokes wouldn’t make me one of the lads. They were signed-up military and I was only ‘attached’. But still. I had the rank of full colonel, and they were required to salute me.

The tale that follows is only 90 pages long (perfect length for a novel), but feels rather longer as Barry's tale is told in one rather rambling and circuitous stream, as he gets sidetracked on to his divorce, his love of the NATO Hitch as a towing attachment and his struggles with his insurers to get it replaced when he was rear-ended, anecdotes about Kate Adie and James Blunt, and his escapades with the troops (or rather their escapades which he witnesses), and more, but seemingly rather putting off the real reason for his story, which only emerges rather suddenly in the closing pages.

Culturally insensitive, to put it mildly, Barry refers to the locals as "chogies" - which I believe (Barry himself would have no idea) is actually US army slang dating back to the Korean war and the phrase "저기" or "저기 가라" (romanised - “jeogi” or “jeogi gara”) meaning 'go over there', a term used for a local serving as a gofer for the troops.

Overall, Barry is sketched memorably, although I can't say I gained much from his company. 2.5 stars rounded up to 3 for the accidental 한국어.

A rather stronger review by John Self in the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...

[Matthew Ted · Rating 3 out of 5]

67th book of 2021.

2.5/3. This is Fitzcarraldo’s latest publication, officially published tomorrow, June 23. Batlava Lake, Pristina, Kosovo, 1999. Barry Ashton is a civil engineer attached to the Royal Engineers corps in the British Army. He’s a recently divorced, non-sensitive, handy-man, which makes him an unlikely narrator for this 90-page monologue about his time in Kosovo and his ex-wife and children. A “comic” novel, which never means laugh-aloud funny but there’s a certain appreciation or awareness that there are comic elements at play. It is a strange novel that never truly amounts to anything, but at the same time, right at the end, has an odd unsettling feeling just on the edge.

The blurb promises a look at "masculinity, class and identity". These things interest me, particularly the former. After being a martial-arts instructor for six years, I have seen every colour of masculinity, and supposed masculinity, there is. It doesn't really come across. There's a general idea about men, and military men, but it wasn't really as forefront as I imagined. The class and identity idea barely comes in at all. A lot of the words in this novel (very short novel) are used on comical anecdotes and the climax of the novel (because I was starting to worry there wasn't going to be one and it would just fizzle out) consists of the Royal Engineers corps building their own boats to race one another on the Batlava Lake. There's a comical anecdote about the right type of poles for the flags. A memory about Pizza Hut with his kids. One about going to a "restaurant" that opened up near their base in Kosovo. It's all fairly tongue-in-cheek; Barry is a fairly useless guy at anything but his job: he forgot his wife birthday once, he is terrible at writing letters and talking on the phone, throws some homophobic remarks about if his sons turned out to be gay... Overall a fairly ridiculous narrator who we can easily mock. Lee Child, for some reason, is quoted on the back saying it is an "everyman narrative". The novel is basically an odd, "comical" Notes from Underground, a civil engineer in place of a civil servant and a rambling idiot in the place of a bitter existential Russian.

The ending comes close to something unsettling, as I said. I was expecting at some point, and hoping too, that the tone of the novel would shift and we would get something darker coming through. It's almost there. I did have a peculiar feeling hit me on finishing, so I think the novel did something, though I'm not sure what, exactly. I read it in a day, so that's a saving grace if you are interested. The monologue style can either be slow and gruelling or easy-going; Barry's voice is fairly easy-going (and I'll also point out, very contemporary-English). Study of a man, a man who is desperately trying to tell himself he has worth, that his wife gives him a hard time and he's, I guess, a good person. That's the masculinity thing at-play. The ending is the shadow of something far larger, which might be something to do with military forces in foreign countries. If you're looking for an absolutely brilliant comic novel, turn to Fitzcarraldo's publication last month, with Joshua Cohen's The Netanyahus. My review of that is here.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve always vowed to never have expectations when reading a book but I let my guard down. As I have just read the excellent My Cat Yugoslavia and it sparked off a hankering to read books based in Kosovo, I was excited to read Batlava Lake as that is situated in Kosovo. Let’s say I didn’t get what I wanted.

Barry is an engineer and he, and a group of men are located to Kosovo. With the exception of little discussions about the wa, Mar-Jones goes deeper and Batlava Lake is more a stream of consciousness dialogue about weighty topic.

The narrative voice, is one of a working class man. He’s very masculine in his outlook. At the point of the book he is divorced from is wife and has a shaky relationship with his children. Saying that, throughout the book there are glimpses about his past loves, his current situation and his semi racist views.

What I saw here is that Mars-Jones is giving the reader a portrait of a certain type of mentality, complete with attitudes. To be honest I felt that the book was a bit weak, mainly due to it’s narrator. Barry is quite blokey and after a while it grates. I don’t mind stream of consciousness writing but here it got a bit on my nerves. Batlava Lake is not a bad book but it is lacking. I have heard that Adam Mars-Jones has better books so if this is one misfire, then it’s an ok one. I’ve read much worse.

[Doug · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite the departure from Mars-Jones, but a welcome one. He effortlessly creates a character that's pretty much the antithesis of his usual erudite, urbane homosexual protagonists, but is nevertheless spot-on in getting right the musings of Barry, an engineer sent to Kosova on a peacekeeping/reconstruction effort, who gets much more than he bargained for. If this were a full-length work, I suspect one might get bored or restless, but at 90 pages, many of them quite humorous, the author just about pulls it off.

[Neil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Batlava Lake is narrated by Barry Ashton, a civil engineer deployed to assist the Royal Engineer corps of the British Army in Kosovo in 1999. It is one of those books that works by what it doesn’t tell the reader: Barry is a talkative chap but he struggles to get to the point and seems easily distracted, so it is up to the reader to pick up the hints that emerge and put together some pieces. It’s a very short book, definitely sitting in “novella” territory and can easily be read in a single sitting if that sort of thing takes your fancy.

Barry is telling us about what happened in Kosovo, but, and this is quite impressive in just 90 or so pages, he manages to get distracted into telling us about his failed marriage, his relationship with his children and his admiration for the NATO Hitch for towing. Even while talking directly about his time in Kosovo, he gets pulled into telling us about meeting Kate Adie and about James Blunt’s experience at the airport. Eventually, in rather a rush at the end, he tells us about the major event that has presumably been at the back of his mind all the way through his narrative.

For me, the narrative style worked well. Barry is a very believable character and his chatty presentation is easy to read. It quickly becomes clear that he dodges away from difficult topics, so it’s sort of obvious that the book is heading towards something in that direction. But that “something” is a surprise and happens very quickly.

Overall, I found this an entertaining read that quietly got the reader underneath the narrator’s skin.

3.5 stars.

[Rosamund Taylor · Rating 1 out of 5]

Officially my last read of 2022, and unfortunately not a good one! I really enjoyed Box Hill by Adam Mars-Jones, and Batlava Lake has some superficial similarities: both have an unintellectual narrator who is good at his job but struggles to see the realities of the world around him and his relationships. But where Box Hill is compelling and moving, Batlava Lake is simply a mess. The story meanders around the life of Barry, our narrator, and his thoughts on civil engineering. He's working in Albania with the British Army in 1999, following the war. The focus of the story is mostly Barry's pretty uninteresting thoughts about his ex-wife, his friends, his engineering work. There is an underlying plot about the situation in Albania and the atrocities of war, but these are barely touched on until a rushed explanation at the end. It's a poorly structured narrative, and very disappointing. I'm just glad it wasn't any longer.

[Andy Weston · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is not so much a novel about the Kosovo war, as a character study of a distinctly British white middle class laddish male who is at once dislikable.
It’s an odd choice for the subject of such a devastating war. Other groups such as the ethnic Albanians, the Bosniaks or Gorani, are surely the real victims.
Mars-Jones’s style of writing is as of a voice recording of a monologue from the protagonist, Barry. It starts off as being irritating, but soon, even in such a short novel, becomes boring.

[Charlie Kruse · Rating 1 out of 5]

this sucked

[Graham Sillars · Rating 5 out of 5]

Firstly I would like to thank the lovely folks at Fitzcarraldo Editions for sending me this short but jam packed novella.

I enjoyed this story. (that, in my opinion, feels like a stream of consciousness piece.

We follow Barry as he talks about his remembered experiences of working as an engineer with the British Army during the conflict in Kosovo of the late 1990s.

I enjoyed the narrative and the fact it was being told in the form of memories of the time it illustrates. The human memory is a many layered thing and we very much see this in this story. Barry meanders from memory to memory and digresses all along the way. It isn’t jarring or tedious like some other narratives can be in the same or similar styles.

A very well written and enjoyable novella told by a character who isn’t one dimensional and is very human indeed. I look forward to picking up other works by the author.

[Alex O'Connor · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had lower expectations going into this - not sure why - but I left having thoroughly enjoyed this small book. I love the mercenary - there is a level of detached coldness that permeates prose written about them that I find very appealing. This book reminded me a lot of Denis Johnson, a huge compliment for me.

[Malahat · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked it because I found the narrator to be a little asshole-ish like me ?? and I could relate. Also I loved the ease with which the class and identity issues have been raised. Also a very easy read for anyone who’s looking a short and quick read for the weekend.

[Austin]

strange, funny, sad - such an impressive writer

[David Hebblethwaite · Rating 4 out of 5]

Adam Mars-Jones is one of those writers I’ve managed to hear of without knowing much about their work. After reading this short (under 100 pages) novel, I am keen to explore more.

The narrator of Batlava Lake is Barry Ashton, a civilian engineer working with the British army in Kosovo in 1999. This is how his account begins:

Lake Batlava is beautiful. Deep, not exactly welcoming. I don’t expect the locals think it’s much like Loch Ness, but we did. I did. No legends about monsters, none that I’d heard of. But how would I get to hear that about them anyway? I’d have to speak the language, and the Barry brain doesn’t do languages. Just doesn’t want to know. ‘Gut und Morgen’ is about as much as I can manage in foreign parts, doesn’t get you far in Kosovo. Plus we weren’t there as sightseers, though we saw some sights. We saw some sights.

This first paragraph establishes a fair amount about Barry: he’s chatty and matey, but can be insensitive to social niceties and the feelings of others. He’s more of a practical person than an intellectual one. There’s also plenty he is not telling us yet: immediately I wonder what’s behind “We saw some sights”.

The prose of Batlava Lake provides an interesting comparison with James Clammer’s Insignificance, another novel written from the viewpoint of a man who works with his hands. But where the effect of Insignificance was to open its protagonist up to us – to show him as a thinker as well as a doer – Barry’s narration helps to obscure him. He talks a lot, but it feels like a front – or at least that he’s unclear on exactly what he wants to say.

Still, behind all Barry’s talk is a story: a story of his deteriorating personal relationships, but perhaps especially a story of the brutality of war. This is a narrator who’s not really up to the task of conveying the gravity of that subject, let alone that of empathising with the victims of the conflict. Yet I found Batlava Lake powerful despite this, because it’s possible to read between the lines of what Barry says. Here the book’s shortness works in its favour: in a longer narrative, the effect might have been diluted. Instead, Batlava Lake builds to a crescendo, and ends in a place that feels just right.

[Phil Tolmie · Rating 4 out of 5]

The goofiest old man in the pub corners you and proceeds to tell you his entire life story, which involves more crimes against humanity than you expected. Perfectly realised.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Barry Ashton is a civil engineer deployed to Kosovo with the British Army after the civil war there in the ‘90s. He’s a bit of an ass—dull-minded bureaucrat who imagines himself as rational, ticking off boxes on administrative forms, taking special pride in being “[q]ualified under the Safety Rules Procedures to inspect premises and equipment and to give the go-ahead for service personnel to undertake their duties.” A strictly-by-the-rules type as unimaginative and unreflective as you might expect—a casual bigot, indifferent to and/or confused by duties of marriage and fatherhood, a man of principle unless those principles put personal life at stake.

An unsurprising result of this is the disdain by which he is held by the army men forced to salute him and follow his orders and by his wife back home who divorces him midway through his appointment in Kosovo. Hints are dropped throughout the story about how well Barry is doing his job, details I didn’t recognize were clues until the book’s end, and then I thought of Raymond Carver’s story “So Much Water So Close to Home” (1981).

I’ve known and worked with people like Barry Ashton, people who valiantly attempt to become two-dimensional examples of humanity via a steady application of “rationality,” itself a concept based upon wholly unexamined assumptions that allow for evading personal responsibility. It is to Mars-Jones’s credit that he is able to restore Barry’s tragic third-dimension and by so doing highlights Barry’s significant moral failings.

[Juliano · Rating 4 out of 5]

“Then they’re surprised their houses fall down. Sometimes you have to despair of people, just give up hope. When people won’t be helped.” Adam Mars-Jones’ latest novel(la?), Batlava Lake, is a brief and exciting exercise in voice and characterisation, its laddish,’ manly narrator lacking any kind of literary prowess or ambition, yet still delivering a story that is thoroughly thought-provoking and engaging, well-paced, clever, intricate, meaningful — and, towards the end, frankly shocking, its final pages astonishing, a rebuke to the reader who can get through such a narrative without ever asking: what are they actually doing at the beautiful Batlava Lake in the first place? “Chuck in a flamethrower and everyone’s a caveman”, Barry opines around a BBQ. In many ways Mars-Jones has written quite a comic novel, even/especially in its bathos: “And so on — nearly funny. Not quite.” The narrator, Barry, tells the story of his career entwined with that of his marriage, with plenty of comical pitstops and digressions: his thoughts on parenting, on Elton John/being gay (“It’s not a normal way of carrying on, spending that much on flowers”), and on masculinity — or, subconsciously perhaps, masculinity-in-crisis, viewed most clearly through homoerotic Buzz and Woody pirate radio fanfic (yep). In the midst of all this concerns over the BBC, refugees, and colonial legacies — to name a few things — emerge with great acuity, nuance and narrative flair.

[Mel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kosovo, 1999 - Barry has been deployed as a civil engineer attached to the British Army in the immediate aftermath of the Kosovo War, charged with rebuilding critical infrastructure.

Intrigued by the blurb, I bought this on a whim and although the topic - essentially the mindset within the British Army - is fairly niche, I enjoyed it. More character study than plot-driven, the setting of Kosovo is largely secondary - it’s easy to imagine the story anywhere, after any war. Attached to the Army but not part of it, Barry is both an insider and outsider at the same time, which makes him an interesting narrator. It’s not a particularly flattering portrayal of the British soldiers - their boredom and disdain seep through the entire novel, and, as with anything British, class casts a long shadow over everything. They are not themselves fighting but they are encountering the immediate aftermath of a war - inevitably this takes a toll on the soldiers’ sense of normality and the increasing disconnect between the lives of the soldiers (and attached contractors) and that of their families is well depicted. An immersive stream-of-consciousness exploration of the mindset within a British peacekeeping force.

[cherry · Rating 3 out of 5]

- Introduction: Ooh this looks interesting.
- Middle: There are no chapters and it feels like an extended diary of a foreign recruit in war—it’s somewhat realistic but dull. There are no chapters. Every time I come back to this from a break I’m confused. I don’t get some of the celebrity references. This is not worth my time. I want to stop reading this.
- Ending: I’m chuckling at the pages—this is horribly dark but funny. This feels like an actual memoir of human named Barry and his personality shines through—almost doesn’t feel like fiction. Finally getting used to the writing style and it’s kinda genius—how are so many independent thoughts and events represented coherently in a never ending ramble? Things go full circle back to Lake Baklava.
- Overall: Mars-Jones characterization of Barry is strong, but at a cost of the middle being very dull to get through despite the short length of the book. Some parts seemed redundant to the overall message: the hotel windowless curtain experience, descriptions of rail shooting, arguments with wife (poorly explored in my opinion). Read if you are patient and a masochist—I’m definitely not.
- 7/10 (3.5 rounded down)

[Luke · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was described to me at one point as an act of ventriloquism — and now having finished it, I can’t help but agree. Mars-Jones has a real knack for inhabiting fully his characters, giving them a richness of life and language not normally afforded to literary fiction. Often I find in capital-L Literary works, people can speak with odd diction, tending towards vague aphorism or poignancy, with authors unwilling or unable to try to capture the more naturalistic cadences of the way we speak with one another. Batlava Lake eschews this in favour of a candid, personable verisimilitude which makes every turn of the page a deeper insight into this lively, entertaining narrative.

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a gut-punch of a novella. I have a thing for first-person writing - flawed, painfully human narrators rambling on about the tangents of their lives, as if in drunken conversation - and the character of Barry Ashton did not let me down. As well as the pure entertainment, I found this a subtle satire of both British masculinity and the liberal-interventionist delusions that led NATO into Kosovo in the first place. Devour all 97 pages in one sitting and let the final few haunt you.

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not my cup of tea. A meandering narrator who shares his experience while deployed as a civilian attachment to a NATO mission in Kosovo. I found it most difficult to relate to the protagonist but his style of storytelling is cohesive. There are no set scenes, and the book is very stream of conscious. However, remarkably, it’s fairly easy to follow along — which is a nod to the writer’s ability to keep the narrative thread going

[Bridget Bonaparte · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would say this is more of a 3.5. It’s a fine little book and I think the character is rendered well, but it’s nothing groundbreaking. I do think it’s an interesting narrative style in terms of class etc. but I feel like the British soldier style book is a bit stale tbh. Not the level of excellence fitz usually is.

[Pete Fisher · Rating 1 out of 5]

High hopes for this book as reviews were good, sadly, my headline would be 'what a bore'. I read this short novel over two days and dropped it immediately into a bag to be taken to my local Barnardo's charity shop. The narrator is recently divorced....how did his wife put up with him for so long? Probably the dullest book I have ever read.

[Pavol Hardos · Rating 2 out of 5]

Though I appreciate the literary ventriloquism of embodying the voice of an engineering dullard - who as a civilian attached to a NATO mission in Kosovo recounts his life and various goings-on, until finally, in the last third of his ramblings he gets to tell you the story he intended, with the tragic punchline falling completely flat, thanks in part to the manner of the delivery - reading him tell the story was equally as pleasant as if you were imprisoned in a pub somewhere as a recipient of this monologue in person.

[Branka · Rating 3 out of 5]

Batlava Lake is story told by Barry Ashton, a civil engineer deployed in Pristina, Kosovo in 1999.
Barry is easily distracted, while he is remembering things in Kosovo, in between, he talks about his life, his ex-wife, his marriage and his two sons.
The story somehow didn't keep my attention and although it is a short novella, for me, was quite long.

[J · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars. Some examination of the gender divide but not much on anything else, including war itself. It could've been set in Swindon without much difference. Anyway, it was OK, but the climax didn't illustrate any new or interesting point that I could see. I think it might've been mis-sold on the blurb

[Apina_lukee_kirjoja · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely to read a book about men which portrays men as human, in the good and the bad, and not as toxic, abusive mess. And doing this while set in military too. A comforting pleasure to read (although I was waiting for toxic mess to appear all the way to the end. Which it did, but not in a way I was expecting.)

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

We all know this bumbling british divorcee dad and Barry is no different, the characterisation was sympathetic by the author and rightfully so. The ‘reveal’ on the last page is mostly out of place and would do better to come sooner to keep you engaged.

[D M · Rating 1 out of 5]

Set against a backdrop of turmoil, the book makes no attempt to explore the country's state or its people. Instead, the author opts for a stream-of-consciousness narrative, centering on a dull, self-absorbed character, entirely devoid of plot or purpose.