In spite of its sub-title as “a comedy” I found very little to amuse me in this ultimately tragic tale. An occasional gentle wry smile, for sure, but overall it’s a sad, melancholy and increasingly dark story. It’s set in a small Adriatic coastal town in the former Yugoslavia in the 1980s, shortly before the break up of that country. Nothing much happens here and the inhabitants get by as best they can. Andrej the postman and Josip the cable car attendant find their life entwined when each discovers something about the other and feels he can use it to his advantage. A “comedy” of errors ensues – hence my wry smiles – and the ingenious plot unfolds before our eyes. It’s an original, well-crafted and well-paced novel, atmospheric and insightful. The population is primarily Croat but they comfortably live side-by-side with the Serbs – until everything begins to disintegrate around them. Suddenly political and ethnic hostility come to the fore and Andrej’s and Josip’s schemes seem all too innocent in comparison with the horrors to come. It’s a graphic reminder how previous amity can all too quickly turn to hate. I found this a bleak book, but an entertaining and engaging one, and I enjoyed it very much.

Martin Michael Driessen’s novel The Pelican is set in a quiet Yugoslavian coastal town. It’s the sort of place where everyone knows everyone else and knows their history–the exception being the occasional tourists who pass through. The story revolves around two discontent men: Josip–an unhappily married, war hero, cable car operator and lanky bachelor postman Andrej. These two men engage in parasitic blackmail schemes–each one blackmailing the other.


While Josip and Andrej are, on the surface, two very different men, there are some commonalities. Josip is trapped in a miserable marriage to a mad woman. Andrej is a failed soccer player who longs for a girlfriend, lives alone and has a thing for Princess Diana. While both men are trapped, each in his own way, they have managed to create a bit of excitement for themselves. Josip, through the use of ads for women, has managed to build a secret life, and Andrej has been opening people’s mail for years.

"He liked to imagine that Marshal Tito would have decorated him for his vigilance, and for thwarting potential capitalist plots. He steamed open the envelopes in his kitchenette, and after having inspected the contents on the Formica table, he carefully glued them back shut. "

Of course, if there’s money inside, well those items are not resealed. Andrej just helps himself.

The inevitable happens. Andrej discovers, through his little hobby of opening other’s mail, that Josip is having a torrid affair. He photographs Josip and his lover together and then starts blackmailing Josip. …

From this point, a danse macabre ensues. Andrej blackmails Josip wasting his ill-gotten gains and Josip, after discovering Andrej’s dirty secret begins blackmailing the postman. There’s a wry black, bleak humour at play here. Both of these men have sad lives, and the blackmail schemes are rather torturous–given that these men don’t have a great deal. But then when are blackmailers humanitarians? I found it somewhat implausible that Josip didn’t guess that Andrej was his blackmailer, but then plot wise, the mutual blackmail thing couldn’t have been constructed if Josip had guessed the truth.

While the tale has its humour (the title is The Pelican: A Comedy), it also segues into war, and there’s some animal cruelty/neglect. Considering how nasty these people are towards each other, it’s not too surprising there would be poor treatment of animals. Overall, I would say apart from some initial dark humour, in its exploration of failed friendship and wasted lives, this isn’t funny at all.

Review copy

Translated by Jonathan Reeder

I received a free electronic copy of this historical novel from Netgalley, author Martin Michael Driessen and translator Jonathan Reeder, and Amazon Crossing, publisher. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me. I have read this novel of my own volition, and this review reflects my personal, honest opinion of this work. I am pleased to recommend this novel to friends and family. Especially family, as we thought sarcasm was our forte, but Driessen has us looking like amateurs.

Our setting is a small, Adriatic coastal town in Yugoslavia, pretty but not large enough to encourage tourists, a town without any industry and isolated by a range of mountainous hills keeping it accessible only by bus. Their main claim to fame is a pod of pink pelicans who summer in the area and a dusty greyhound track outside of town. The time is the spring of 1988. We have a full cast, but only two primary protagonists.

Andrej is young, very tall but clumsy with it, a man with big dreams but little self-respect despite his job as the bicycle-driven mail carrier of the town. It takes him about five hours of the day to sort and deliver the local mail. In his spare time, he steams open and reads the locals' outgoing mail before resealing and stamping to send it on, discards any incoming mail to guests of the hotel if they include cash, pays close attention to his lottery tickets and cruises the beach looking for an outsider who might love him. Local ladies know him too well to love him. And he takes photographs, mostly of butterflies since that is what he has been able to sell in the past.

Josip Tudjman is a decorated war veteran, middle-aged, married to a woman who has drifted way past bi-polar and the father of Katherina, a youngster with learning problems. Because of his war service, he was assigned the position of machinist and conductor of the two-car funicular, completed in 1892 as was the church located at the top of the hill. The church was bombed in the war, so the local gravity-driven train cars that accessed the top of the nearest hill now only provided access to the site of the local monument to the fallen warriors from the community. Josip began each day walking to the car at the top of the hill to load the water ballast that would counter the weight of the bottom car and passengers should that car be required. The funicular is scheduled to run every hour, but most days it made the trip to the top with just Josip, who ate his lunch at the monument before returning to the bottom to spend the afternoon awaiting potential riders.

In the spring of '88 Andrej opens and photographs what is obviously the reply to a lonely-hearts ad - from Josip to a lady in Zagreb. And he photographs their meeting at the local bus station, their tryst at the war memorial over the lunch hour, and noted Josifs bus ride out to Zagreb every six weeks. Though he had nothing against Josip - he barely knew him - thus began Andrej's career as a blackmailer. And the laughs truly begin.

Published in the Netherlands in 2017; published in translation by Amazon Crossing on November 12, 2019

A brief section of The Pelican relates a character’s memory of friendships based on sacrifice in World War II. The last section takes place in Germany fifteen years after the main story. The bulk of the story is set in a small town on the Adriatic coast of Yugoslavia at the end of the 1980s, shortly before the onset of the Yugoslav Wars.

One of the charms of the village is that nothing ever happens there. The place has been unchanged for generations. Its historic buildings and its clock museum cannot compete with livelier tourist destinations. It has no industry or commerce and “the coastal region was, agriculturally speaking, of little consequence.” Yet Martin Michael Driessen populates the village with characters both ordinary and eccentric, the kind of people who make the best of their lives without worrying too much about politics or the outside world.

The village postman, a man named Andrej, steams open letters for lack of anything better to do with his life. Thus he learns that Josip, a war hero with a pension who now operates the funicular, is having an affair with a woman in Zagreb. Andrej decides to blackmail Josip, in part from a sense of entitlement (the world has been unkind to Andrej and he believes he is owed better). He uses the proceeds to gamble unsuccessfully but also to purchase an unhappy racing greyhound that would otherwise be put to death. The greyhound’s new circumstances do not make him a happier dog.

The story takes a comedic twist when the blackmailer is blackmailed. The comedy has a Shakespearean flavor that depends on the improbable concealment of identities. Josip and Andrej are stumped in their efforts to unmask their blackmailers, although they tend to suspect everyone. One of the blackmailers justifies his crimes with the thought that corruption has a good side — it “at least gave the unfairness of existence a somewhat more human face.”

The two blackmailers develop an unexpected friendship that leads to unexpected bouts of shame. But is a guilty conscience a sufficient motivation to change one’s behavior?

While a subtitle bills the novel as a comedy, it might be better described as a tragicomedy. It is, at least, a dark comedy of errors into which conflict and bitterness intrude. War is coming. Everyone knows it, although the villagers do their best to ignore the inevitable. After generations of stability, the village and its people are destined for disruption.

While the residents are primarily Croatian, they live in relative harmony with residents who are Serbs. An anti-Semitic character named Schmitz, who engages in spirited rants at the local café, is opposed by more enlightened characters who understand that “if Croatia wanted to be recognized as a nation, and even dreamt of future membership in the European Community, where even chickens are protected, then there was no place for this kind of talk.” Another character emphasizes the essential humanity of all people with the phrase “pumpkins are just pumpkins,” a “people are just people” philosophy that has allowed Croats to survive all “the doges and the sultans and the emperors and the dictators” who eventually bit the dust. Pumpkins, after all, thrive and reproduce without regard to political subdivisions and ethnic groups.

It is only a matter of time, however, before nationalism trumps tolerance, before artillery changes everything. As Josip realizes, years later, much of his own history as well as the region’s history was based on pettiness. Regret changes nothing while understanding one’s mistakes, even late in life, at least has personal value.

The Pelican tells a story from the perspectives of characters who balance corruption with kindness. The ending is fitting. This is a book that might leave the reader feeling happy or sad, but either way, the novel encourages a better understanding of the happy and sad aspects of human nature.

RECOMMENDED

At times tragic and emotional, but also quite humorous. Plenty of symbolism here if you want to delve deeper into the story.

Really enjoyed the writing style and felt the story moved along at a nice pace. The characters were all full of life and seemed to jump off the page. Andrej and Josip are both charged by greed, secrecy, and emotion all the while not ever recognizing the actions of each other.

I don't know enough about the war to comment on the handling of that story here. But I can tell you that reading about it in this book definitely hit home for me. The author (and translator) deftly handles such a sad story with grace and aplomb.

This was a small story with a big impact.

This is quite good. The style is a little different than a Westerner might use, but it has very strong, and at times, funny, prose. There's a fair bit of symbolism, and it's not totally realistic. Recommended for literary fans.

I really appreciate the advanced copy for review!!

Driessen's humour permeates the whole story whilst the handling of the human condition is exceptional; "The Pelican" is a comedy rich with symbolism and absurd tropes.

The Pelican has sharp dialogue and translates well. An interesting literary read that delivers detail and characterization.