Because I read the audiobook edition I wasn't able to read the Author's Note, but I found this article that explains how the novel relates to the author's family. https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/bo... Provides comprehensive coverage of all our resident and migratory butterflies, including the latest information on newly discovered species such as the Cryptic Wood White and the Geranium Bronze. The definitive book on the subject, it includes fully updated distribution maps. This is for you if you are pulled towards survival stories, poetic writing, and the kind of novel that humanizes headlines. In this article we have compiled a short guide on which butterflies you are likely to see outside this spring/summer, as well as some tips on the features by which you can distinguish certain species. Gardens Told from Zora’s POV, the use of third-person helped remind me that this beautifully written, descriptive, heartbreaking, and reflective story wasn’t a memoir!

stars. ( Yes, I said 4.25 here earlier today, but it’s a debut novel, and it is still in my mind after the entire day has passed by. It deserves more!) Enjoyed it mostly (except for the gore aspect) solid and intelligent BUT with one caveat…I really didn’t think it worked to change the actress who plays Solange/Catherine in the last episode. Just ended up thinking something must’ve happened to the original actress, so that it made it confusing because did they think we wouldn’t notice? As the situation worsens, Zora wants to reunite with husband and she tries to finds way to escape. As this is a historically accurate book, it’s interesting to see how people escaped Sarajevo and made their way into safer countries.Drawing on her own family history, Morris has crafted an absorbing story set in Sarajevo in 1992, the first year of the Bosnian War. Zora, a middle-aged painter, has sent her husband, Franjo, and elderly mother off to England to stay with her daughter, Dubravka, confident that she’ll see out the fighting in the safety of their flat and welcome them home in no time. But things rapidly get much worse than she is prepared for. Phone lines are cut off, then the water, then the electricity. “ We’re all refugees now, Zora writes to Franjo. We spend our days waiting for water, for bread, for humanitarian handouts: beggars in our own city.” This novel approaches the siege from a middle-aged woman artists point of view. It's also particularly well done and I was surprised how compelling it was. I just couldn't stop listening. It is with this historical perspective that you can see just how extreme and intentional the discrimination has been, and how clear the impacts of it continue from the past into the present. Priscilla Morris’ writing is serviceable but the book excels at created an emotive atmosphere. The reader will feel Zora’s pain and pleasure when finding ways to survive and her eventual bid for freedom.

Nah, pretentious to pretend that we had to accept that we hadn’t seen one photograph of Solange so that we questioned the ‘reality’ of the whole story. I went to Bosnia, Croatia and Montenegro on holidays in May 2006, accidentally stumbling on an independence referendum in the latter, when it seceded from Serbia. Gunshots and fireworks broke out in the capital Podgerica in jubilant scenes that I will never forget. This was a wonderful though heart-breaking book which kept me reading all through, and one which I highly recommend. Grasslands are an incredibly valuable habitat for many of the UK’s moths and butterflies. Semi-natural grassland, pasture, arable land, urban parkland and any areas with rough unmanaged grass will all support a variety of butterfly species. In the height of summer these areas can be teeming with Skippers, Common Blues, Ringlets and Meadow Browns. Be sure to inspect any flowering plants (particularly thistles and knapweeds) as these can act as vital nectaring points for many butterflies. Pay close attention for the fast and subtle movements of smaller species as these can often disappear against such a busy environment. A prime example of this is the Small Copper which is notoriously hard to spot due to its minute size, fast flight and discrete colouration (when its wings are closed). LOOK OUT FOR: In the UK there are currently 57 resident species of butterfly and two regular migrants. Of these, it is estimated that 76% have declined in abundance, occurrence or both over the past 40 years. Almost all of these losses can be attributed to man-made changes such as habitat destruction and pollution, along with larger patterns of weather and climate change.I love Robert Drake. I think he's such an amazing author. This is the first book of his that I read but I do have the other ones. Now, while I have to finish reading some of the other books I have yet to finish and then I'll start with his other ones. She loves Sarajevo. She knows all its alleys and courtyards, all its scents and sounds—the way the light falls at the end of their street in wintertime, the rattle of the tram, the blowsy roses that bloom each June in the mosque gardens, the plums and fogs in the autumn, the ponderous old men playing chess in the cafés, the mahalas—the old neighbourhoods—that radiate from the centre like the spiral of a snail’s shell. Zora is a landscape artist, obsessed with painting bridges. Following a period of ill health for her mother, Zora urges her husband and her mother to go to England to visit Zora's daughter and granddaughter. Gradually it becomes clear that what they envisage will be a temporary separation becomes something altogether more permanent as Zora is trapped in Sarajevo, a city surrounded. Neighbours and friends of differing nationalities (the author prefers this term to ethnicities) come together to survive through the toughest of times in this tale of humanity, art, community and what it takes to survive. I'd already read about the siege in the 2008 highly acclaimed novel The Cellist of Sarajevo which showed the power of music in this horrific circumstance.