YA Novel/Memoir: The Cat I Never Named

 A real find from the library's "also read" suggestions. 

 

Title: The Cat I Never Named: A True Story of Love, War, and Survival
Author: Amra Sabic-El-Reyess
Publication Info: Bloomsbury YA, 2020. 370 pages (Kindle edition).
Source: Library

Publisher's Blurb:

The stunning memoir of a Muslim teen struggling to survive the Bosnian genocide--and the stray cat who protected her family through it all.

 

Amra was a teen in Bihac, Bosnia, when her friend said they couldn’t speak anymore because Amra was Muslim. Then refugees from other cities started arriving, fleeing Serbian persecution. When Serbian tanks rolled into Bihac, the life she knew disappeared—right as a stray cat followed her home. Her family didn’t have the money to keep a pet, but after the cat seemed to save her brother, how could they turn it away? Saving a life one time could be a coincidence, but then it happened again—and Amra and her family wondered just what this cat was.

This is the story of a teen who, even in the brutality of war, never wavered in her determination to obtain education, maintain friendships, and even find a first love—and the cat that provided comfort, and maybe even served as a guardian spirit, in the darkest of times.

My Review:
I picked up this book on a whim, because the cover caught my attention and it sounded interesting. I'm glad I did. I wasn't more than a few pages in when it became a can't-put-it-down read--and that doesn't happen to me often these days, so any book that grabs me by the face deserves a good mention.

The question, of course, is why I was so engrossed, and it's a little hard to say exactly. For one thing, I didn't know much about the Bosnian genocide, so there was that sense of learning something. The depiction of a rapid transformation of a country from a place of apparently peaceful coexistence (in the eyes of the teen Amra, who was taken by surprise despite being aware on some level of the extreme prejudice against Muslims). Within days, as it seemed to her, a peaceful society crumbled into an all-out effort to wipe out the Muslim population of Bosnia, and her clear path to her future vanished along with it.

The story is well put together, with the reader's understanding of what is happening growing along with Amra's. The role of the cat is important, but not over-emphasized or made too much of--the family ends up with a range of half-belief in the cat's protective power for them. Finally, the writer has written a powerful story in a gripping way, without trying to make everything work out perfectly (like her first love). She has done some rearranging of events, but this is in essence a true story.

The thing that was in some ways hardest for me to read was not about the hatred of the Serbs for the Bosnian Muslims, or even the death and destruction. It was the way petty resentments and individual greed sprang up immediately when the city was liberated and began rebuilding. Victims of war stealing from each other or exacting petty revenge may have done more to damage my hopes for humanity than the war itself.

My Recommendation:
This is an excellent, gripping book, and worth reading by anyone, YA and up. Some relatively frank depictions of war casualties and what was being done to the women of Bosnia when taken by the enemy definitely places the book as for older readers, not middle grade. A reader needs to be able to deal with discussions of rape and Amra's fear of rape, as well as not-too-graphic descriptions of death.

FTC Disclosure: I borrowed an electronic copy of The Cat I Never Named from my library, and received nothing from the author or the publisher in exchange for my honest review. The opinions expressed are my own and those of no one else. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”   

 

 ©Rebecca M. Douglass, 2023

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