A sweet, sweet, charming novel.

In an interview, Serbian author Zoran Živković admits he probably shouldn't have a personal favorite among his twenty-two published novels. But if he did, it would be Miss Tamara, The Reader. A prime reason for his choice: Miss Tamara, The Reader comes as close as possible to what he considers the perfect mosaic novel.

Zoran Živković has written an entire string of mosaics, that is, novels where the final chapter circles back to incorporate elements from each of the previous chapters so as to provide a greater unity to the work as a whole. Thus, in Miss Tamara, The Reader, slices from the first seven chapters - Apples, Lemons, Blackberries, Bananas, Apricots, Gooseberries, Melons - are gathered up and mixed together in Fruit Salad, the novel's delectable concluding chapter.

I suspect there are at least two other compelling reasons this novel is his favorite: 1) A publisher once suggested he turn his imagination to the atrocities of the civil war in Bosnia in order to hit the bestseller list. Zoran Živković replied that he isn’t at all interested in a mass audience and prefers to maintain his own vision as a writer. You will not find a clearer expression of the author's unique literary voice than in Miss Tamara, the Reader, a novel at the opposite end of the spectrum from historical and political documentation; 2) Zoran Živković admires Patrick Süskind’s artistry in creating atmospheres so potent they can jolt the senses. As the German author explores the sense of smell in Perfume, so Zoran Živković explores the sense of taste, specifically the taste of fruit, in Miss Tamara, the Reader.

And speaking of taste, let me share a taste of the novel by serving up a sliver from each of the fruity chapters:

Apples: Although the acidity of tart apples gives her stomach trouble, Miss Tamara eats one tart green apple while sitting in her armchair reading her book, a practice she's consistently maintained over the years. She doesn’t peal the apple, rather she quarters the apple and removes its core and seeds. Each quarter is then sliced into thirds and thirds again, thus giving her thirty-six pieces, one for each of the thirty-six pages she reads during her daily reading session. Miss Tamara eats her pieces of apple assiduously, keeping the nibbled bits in her mouth until she finishes the last word on each page. Thus her reading is enhanced by a nonstop apple taste.

But today she is struck with a strange premonition: if she continues to read the very book she holds in her hands, she will not live to tell the tale (no pun intended). She just did turn forty and knows she’s in excellent health - but, but, but . . . she is confronted with a choice: turn the page and die on the spot or immediately halt her reading session, something she has never done in all her years. The solution Miss Tamara devises is drastic in the extreme. Drastic but sweet as life itself is sweet- as sweet as her apples are tart.

Lemons: Why did these people audition her so she can sit in an armchair in a designated room on a top floor in an office building and read aloud from an excerpt of a novel taking place in a summerhouse surrounded by a large lemon grove? And why is she also required to drink a glass of lemonade? How odd.

Well, maybe she can beat these men and women at their own game. They refuse to give her details about the surrounding whys and wherefores, things like the name of the novel or the author or the reason she is reading in the first place. Miss Tamara formulates an ingenious plan to hunt down both title and writer and subsequently consults a computer’s database and contacts her friend Sara who works at the Institute for Modern Literature. Ah, her research has paid off – she now knows the author. But following her next designated reading, Sara calls her on the phone to deliver some bad news. The plot thickens and it's lemons from here on out.

Blackberries: Poor Miss Tamara. After all these years of reading, she now needs reading glasses to correct her longsightedness. A friend suggests blackberries as a way to restore her good eyesight. Since there could be no harm in trying, she stocks up on bottles of blackberry juice.

Miss Tamara drinks her blackberry juice while sitting in her armchair reading her book. Fine. But, what is this? She notices blank spaces dotting the first page of her new chapter. After a brief examination, she can see every single letter “a” is missing. Darn those publishers and their newfangled methods of printing!

The next page has greater problems: every single “a” and “e” is missing. With each successive page, the blank spaces increase until each page is entirely blank. Miss Tamar raises her head, looks out the window and takes off her new glasses. She glances down at her book – all is blurry but there it is, the entire text just as it should be. She quickly puts on her glasses. Once again, the pages are blank. Oh, so it’s her new glasses and not the publisher! Should she make another appointment with the optometrist? No, no – he has done enough damage already and she would never want to submit to being his guinea pig. Blackberry juice to the rescue, maybe.

Bananas: Miss Tamara notices the postcard in her book as soon as she leaves the City Library. She opens the book to take a look: the postcard is a picture of three glitzy bananas against a blue background. Ah, the previous reader must have used this ugly postcard as a bookmark. But then she reads the note on the back: Miss Tamara, please be at the Museum of Modern Art at four-fifteen today. Look for the statue “Girl Reading” in the third hall. There is a bench facing it. Sit on it and start reading the nineteenth chapter of this book. So begins this strange but charming tale.

Apricots: Miss Tamara realizes she is having problems with her memory. A sweet tale of intrigue on how our memory is such a key element in both reading and in life. And what better way to stimulate our memory than taste, in Miss Tamara's case, the taste of apricots.

Gooseberries: Miss Tamara finds herself in a tale that quickly shifts from her eating gooseberries to trading sight for blindness and blindness for sight. In writing Gooseberries, Zoran Živković likewise makes a shift - from major to minor key.

Melons: Miss Tamara fixes herself slices of melon and wonders: What will be the very last book I will read? This question prompts her to contemplate her own death. A sweet tale of what in the end proves the cure for Miss Tamara taking herself too seriously.

Fruit Salad: Too scrumptious to say anything other than Miss Tamara, the Reader would make the perfect gift for your friend or someone in your family, most especially if that someone is a reader of books like Miss Tamara.

Miss Tamara, the Reader is available as a stand-alone novel and also part of Impossible Stories 2 published by Cadmus Press.


Serbian author Zoran Živković, born 1948