The Feminist Book Club 4

11.01.2024

Olja Savičević Ivančević: Ljeta s Marijom, 2022.

11. 1. 2024.

We have prepared the fourth meeting of the Feminist Book Club and the first meeting of the new year in a new format – We choose what we read! It's time for Croatian titles again, and the participants have chosen the novel for this meeting from the finalists of the regional literary selection „Štefica Cvek“, a literary award dedicated to feminist and queer themes, published by a group of critics of the younger generation based on the recommendations of a larger group of collaborators from the region. At the January session, we discussed the novel Summers with Mary by Olja Savičević Ivančević (2022), which traces the female line of a family tree through the turbulent history of our region from the beginning of the 20th century until today.

Olja Savičević Ivančević is one of our best-known and most prolific contemporary authors. The multiple award-winner writes poetry, prose (novel, short story), dramatic texts for children and young people as well as columns. Summers with Mary is her third novel (she received the T-portal award for her first, Adio, Cowboy, in 2011).

Questions we discussed in the club:

• What is the structure of the book? How could we read it in an alternative order?
• Who is the narrator in the first and second parts?
• What political motifs are there in the stories?