#RivetingReviews: Max Easterman reviews RED WATER by Jurica Pavičić, translated by Matt Robinson

Jurica Pavičić lives in Split, where parts of this novel are set. He is known in Croatia for ‘his unorthodox thrillers … social analysis with deep insights into morally complex situations’; Red Water is no exception to that assessment. It’s the first of Pavičić’s novels to be published in English (in an excellent and highly readable translation by Matt Robinson) and it’s brilliantly told in meticulous and absorbing detail. The novel is set in a small Croatian coastal town – Misto – which has seen better days and will see even worse ones as Yugoslavia, as it then was, descends into political chaos and civil war. The timeline begins in late September 1989 on the day a 17-year old local girl vanishes. Silva Vela is beautiful, popular and wild at heart, but what has happened to her is a mystery: has she been abducted or killed? Or has she just done a runner? The evidence points several ways. The story is told through the reactions of her family – mother Vesna, father Jakov, twin brother Mate; by the actions of the townspeople; through the attitude and actions of the police inspector, Gorki Šain, and of Silva’s acquaintances and college friends in Split, the regional capital. It will take over thirty years for the truth finally to emerge.

The family is shattered and refuses to believe Silva is dead: they don’t believe the police are trying hard enough to find the missing girl, so Jakov and Mate flood the town, the locality and the city of Split, with photos of Silva, hoping for a break-through –information that will lead them to her. But nothing. And then something that shatters the family even more deeply: Inspector Šain reveals their fun-loving, impudent daughter had a very dark side to her life. They have discovered a stash of heroin in a drainpipe beside the house: ‘It was a small brown bundle … Inspector Šain cut through the tape and a brown powder spilled … onto the table. [Jakov] said nothing. Vesna said nothing but looked at Mate … scowling, full of accusatory rage. A look that said, “You must have known something.”’It’s clear that, even if Silva wasn’t using, she was certainly dealing. A local boy she was dancing with the night before she disappeared is questioned, arrested, then released; her regular boyfriend has a solid alibi: nothing the police turns up explains her disappearance and the trail goes cold.

As time passes, the family begins to fall apart: Vesna refuses to talk about what has happened; Jakov retreats from the search; only Mate soldiers on. The break-up reflects that of Yugoslavia: the collapse of Communism, the civil war, and the emergence of an independent Croatia; a backdrop of political upheaval that disrupts families, jobs, and Inspector Šain’s investigation, which is abandoned. Even so, Silva’s memory hovers over every event for the Velas: Mate’s marriage, the birth of his daughter Tina and Jakov’s realisation that, as he watches Tina deal with a quarrel on her eleventh birthday, he sees a new Silva: ‘her pompous manner … the contours of her face … her thin eyebrows and long jaw … what he was looking at was a copy of Silva … she’d always had the last word.’

It’s no spoiler if I reveal the novel is in four parts: ‘Silva Disappears’; ‘Diverging Paths’ – which follows the lives of all those involved over the next twenty years; ‘Silva Returns’; and ‘Red Water’– a final plot twist that hit me like a kick in the teeth. Exactly what happens is for you to find out. But what the ending reveals is how all the characters in this tale of human passion and inadequacy are at the mercy of events taking place far from their home base – but which resonate and reverberate across the years and the miles and change their lives, not always for the better. It is an eye-opener in terms of the events that shaped late twentieth-century Croatia; and it is a tribute to Bitter Lemonthat they selected a novel from this little-understood country for their annual shortlist of translations.

Reviewed by Max Easterman

RED WATER

Written by Jurica Pavičić

Translated from the Croatian by Matt Robinson

Published by Bitter Lemon Press (May, 2025)

June 2025 #RivetingReviews titles are available to buy from bookshop.org.

Max Easterman spent thirty-five years as a BBC broadcaster. He was a lecturer in journalism for seventeen years at Huddersfield University and is today a translator, media trainer with Sounds Right, jazz musician and reviewer.

Read Max Easterman’s #RivetingReview of HUNKELER’S SECRET by Hansjörg Schneider

Read Max Easterman’s #RivetingReview of RUNAWAY HORSES by Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini

Read Max Easterman’s #RivetingReview of DEAD MAN DANCING by Jógvan Isaksen

Read Max Easterman’s #RivetingReview of THE LOVER OF NO FIXED ABODE by Carlo Fruterro and Franco Lucentini

Read Max Easterman’s #RivetingReview of WHAT’S COOKING IN THE KREMLIN. A MODERN HISTORY OF RUSSIA THROUGH THE KITCHEN DOOR by Witold Szabłowski

Read Max Easterman’s #RivetingReview of THE MURDER OF ANTON LIVIUS by Hansjörg Schneider

Read Max Easterman’s #RivetingReview of THE GIRL IN THE EAGLE’S TALONS by Karin Smirnoff

Read Max Easterman’s #RivetingReview of THIRTY DAYS OF DARKNESS by Jenny Lund Madsen

Read Max Easterman’s #RivetingReview of THE WIDOW COUDERC by Georges Simenon

Read Max Easterman’s #RivetingReview of EVEN THE DARKEST NIGHT: A TERRA ALTA INVESTIGATION by Javier Cercas

Read Max Easterman’s #RivetingReview of VIENNA THE INTERNATIONAL CAPITAL by Angus Robertson

Read Max Easterman’s #RivetingReview of SIMENON. THE MAN, THE BOOKS, THE FILMS by Barry Forshaw