Holograms of Fear

In her first novel to be translated into English, a Croatian journalist and frequent contributor to the Nation offers a deceptively simple plot: a women suffering from a life-threatening kidney disease is cured when she receives an organ transplant. The illness is a metaphor; as Drakulic's narrator sifts through the minutiae of details involving the operation and her recovery, she explores what it means to be a woman, both alone and in relation to her family. The novel segues between the narrator's growing up in Yugoslavia and her present life as a patient in a Boston hospital. She relives a suicide attempt and an emotional confrontation with an abusive father, and examines the troubling bond between mothers and daughters--her longing for approval from a beautiful but distant mother, and her ambiguous relationship with her own teenage daughter, whom she has essentially abandoned in Zagreb. The narrator confronts all her demons, one by one, including the most powerful one--her fear of death. Although small in scope, the novel is beautifully conceived, well executed and satisfying. (May)