Adopting Sarajevo

By: Alexandra Marshall

Narrated by: Helen Lloyd

Length: 1 hr and 55 mins

Publisher's Summary

Orphaned during the Siege of Sarajevo, Marina - now a teenage figure skating star - returns to Bosnia for the first time since an American family adopted her as a baby. Tag along with Marina as she discovers the true meaning of family, learns about her heritage, and explores the war-torn city that could have been her home.

Alexandra Marshall is the author of five novels and one nonfiction book. Her short fiction, essays, feature stories, travel journalism, and opinion pieces have appeared in many literary journals, newspapers, and magazines. Marshall has also been a film critic for The American Prospect and a guest columnist for The Boston Globe. She has taught writing in two Harvard extension programs and at Emerson College. Born in Western Pennsylvania and raised in the near suburbs of New York City, Marshall has lived in Boston since 1977.

Ploughshares, the literary magazine of Emerson College

©2015 Emerson College (P)2015 Audible, Inc.

Was Expecting More

This monotone performance of Adopting Sarajevo is lackluster, in my opinion. The discussions between the daughter and adoptive mother prior to visiting Sarajevo are strange, and the relationship between the daughter and adoptive father is just sad. As parents who adopted in Romania, one year after the revolution that left Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu executed by firing squad, I was expecting more. Our own journey was harrowing and unforgettable. In contrast, in this fictional story, Marina is a famous figure skater, our daughter, now 31 years old, is autistic, nonverbal, permanently scarred from the deprivation of the orphanage from which we adopted her. Yet, she is ours, formed by the hands of a loving God who sent us there to bring her home.

A quick visit to Sarajevo

I bought this from Audible and at only just 2 hours, it was a quick listen. In print it is apparently only 51 pages, although it isn't actually available in print, only audio and Kindle.

Marina is a world class figure skater and is invited to perform in the hometown of her birth, Sarajevo. She had been adopted by an American couple after the war and it would be the first time that she had visited the country of her birth.

It was a good, if brief picture of Sarajevo during the war. The taxi driver explained how things were and pointed out some of the remaining evidence of gunfire and destruction.
The description of Marina's skating demonstration was also excellent.
On the other hand, I struggled to piece together all the characters and still don't know who exactly Sara was or why Marina seemed not to know her father very well (One of the disadvantages of audio, as it's hard to backtrack). I'm also surprised that Marina decided not to visit the orphanage from which she was adopted, as the reader/listener would obviously be hoping that she would.

All in all, I found this to be 'good in parts', interesting, but not particularly memorable.