Adios, Cowboy

"Memory is the present of all remembered events," reflects the protagonist of this droll slice-of-life story, expressing the personal sense of stagnation she experiences upon returning to her childhood home in a remote Croatian village. Dada is newly returned from Zagreb to "the Old Settlement," hoping to put a pointless love affair behind her and to care for her aging mother, and she finds the routines of the locals and her grown-up childhood friends little changed from how she remembers them. At home, she moves into the bedroom of her dead brother, Daniel, whose suicide four years earlier casts a pall over current events as his reasons for it slowly come to light. The family home is also cluttered with posters of the old western movies her father loved and the memorabilia of her siblings' youthful games of "cowboys and Indians," and, at the novel's end, an aging cowboy actor comes to shoot a film on location in the town. As depicted by Savičević, Dada is a resilient woman whose appreciation of the absurdities of her life allow her to carefully navigate them. Her experiences make for an intimate character study. (Feb.)