I picked up and started to read “I Hate My Brother” for the worst possible reasons, it kept showing up in my feed and it had a disturbing cover image (two babies facing each other with weapons). I suppose there is also the fact that I have brothers. I don’t hate my brothers (at the moment) but there have been times in my past.
Don’t worry Big Dave and Bubba, this book will not make me hate you more. The brothers in this book are people in Yugoslavia going through their civil war. Imagine Johnny Reb vs the Union Soldiers. I gave this book more leeway than I probably should have, I kept hoping for more. It failed to deliver.
Mr. Bojcic, the author is from that country and probably from that time and place. It reads more like an autobiography and a stream of consciousness story. The mechanics of the writing need a lot of work, at least in the online version I read, which really takes away from the reading. Not a native English speaker or writer (I’m assuming) there are also a lot of grammatical mistakes that also take away from the story. The worst aspect is that I didn’t really care. The story unfolds slowly, too slowly. I kept wanting more, a reason to care. I never got it.
But the author has an earnestness to his writing, and I suppose someone more interested in the conflict and politics in Yugoslavia might like it more than I. But for me? I didn’t need a history book.
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