Ivana Sajko: The Story of a Man Who Collapsed Into His Notebook

The Story of a Man Who Collapsed Into His Notebook Ivana Sajko

. . . I’ve forgotten how to travel, how to surrender to the favor and misfortune of the rails, how one says goodbye, how long one actually stands facing backward watching Point A swiftly disappearing, and after that how long does he continue standing standing standing . . . I open my notebook, but I have no answer, I write: “traveling from Point A to Point B, from a little seaside town to Berlin, I gaze out the window at the unfinished houses on the outskirts, warehouses in the industrial zone, stunted trees along the river with plastic bags hanging from their branches like bats . . .” Sajko teases out the mental state and personal history of the protagonist, posing departure as a major theme that serves as a touchstone not only for our region [of Southeastern Europe] but also for the times we are living in. —Antonela Marušić, Novosti This is a stylistically superb novel, very readable. . . . And although this is a deeply personal text, it functions much more broadly, giving expression to the experiences, doubts, fears and all things encountered not only by this one, but a whole series of generations. —Matija Prica, booksa.hr The Story of a Man Who Collapsed Into His Notebook is about departures, childhood, the end of a relationship and the vanishing possibility in today’s world of fleeing to a better place. Written in the first person, each chapter a single sentence, the novel is an internal soliloquy of self-examination, an excavation of a life punctuated by upheaval and loss, hope and disillusionment, ambition and failure. The reader joins the narrator on his journey, both on the train and in his mind—from disjointed memories triggered by his departure from home, through attempts to put his relationships and experiences in some kind of order to find meaning in them and perhaps assign blame, to confronting his most painful memories—finally arriving with him at his destination with a sense of clarity and the possibility of a new beginning.