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seasaltmocha's review
4.0
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.
foggy_rosamund's review
1.0
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.
sharkybookshelf's review
4.0
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.
mallaeuswastaken's review
3.0
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.
coramorton02's review
dark
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.0
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Xenophobia, War, Death, and Racism
Minor: Vomit and Homophobia
kinga134's review
dark
reflective
sad
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
bibliophileramblings's review
3.0
Spoiler
I picked this book up purely because it is about my home country, the country my parents were born and raised, Kosova! I enjoyed the first few pages, seeing how Kosova looks through the eyes of others. People so far removed from countries like this that they are surprised by everything! When Barry first arrives he’s surprised by the fires that the Serbs are starting even though the war has essentially ended. I’m writing this today, 23 years since the war ended, and when I go to visit my uncle I still see the bullet holes that litter the side of his house! The war might have ended but the signs of it remain.I did expect more from this book, the blurb mentions that it will look at ‘masculinity, class and identity’ and it merely touches upon those topics. Furthermore, a book about the Kosovan war is so centred on the view point of a white male character rather than the Kosovar Albanians who were the real victims. The book focused on the boredom of the soldiers and yet they were in the midst of a country riddled with death, starvation and real victims. The Kosovar’s are merely nameless and faceless ‘zombies’.
However, there were three moments within the book that touched on the hardship and effects of war on the Kosovars. The first being a brief section in which Barry tries to convey to his wife that “the people here have nothing. Nothing. And they’re the lucky ones - the ones who have nothing… we have everything, everything we need and a bit left over. Can’t we stop fighting over things that don’t matter?”. He feels for the victims of this war and shows just how much war can take from you.
The next was the depiction of a few Kosovars following the smell of meat from a camp barbecue started by the soldiers. They infiltrate the camp and begin eating the meat without realising that it is pork. Once the soldiers manage to find the word for pork in the dictionary and repeat “derr!”, over and over again, that’s when the Kosovar’s realise what they are eating. One woman throws up and then continues to eat. ‘Food is food’, you pray you will be forgiven for your sins and the things you had to do in order to stay alive.
Now this final bit, the last few pages of this book are what broke me! It’s hard to write about it but it is the reality of the war and the aftermath of it. That could have just as easily been my parents and I wouldn’t exist today. That also just as easily could have been any member of my family laying there at the bottom of a lake, unidentifiable. A lake that my dad once used to swim in as a child, now forever tainted.
buddhafish's review
3.0
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.
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.