Baltimore

In Baltimore, Jelena Lengold offers an exquisite portrayal of a Belgrade writer, a woman in her forties, whose tightly packed, unresolved inner conflicts with herself and the people closest to her have led her to a sobering dead end. She is compelled to turn around and look closely at the routine of her everyday life – her marriage, family, friends, loves, lies and the likes. What she finds is a strange mixture of uncertainty and boredom, insecurity and determination which grow into fullblown frustration at sessions with her therapist. The writer’s block the protagonist suffers from is a metaphor for a blocked life, a life led in the recesses of reality represented in bouts of silence, web cam voyeurism and Internet flings.

Lengold’s prose style – witty, sharp and somber– strikes a resounding tone for telling the truth of one of our lives.