Genre: Historical Fiction, Contemporary
Author: Marina Šur Puhlovski
Translator: Christina Pribicevich- Zoric
Year Published: 2018
TWs: domestic violence, alcoholism
Rating: 4/5
Messy apartments, heartbreak, and a whole lot of self-reflection. ‘Wild Woman’ is definitely not your typical love story. I picked this book up expecting a deep and thought-provoking look at a woman breaking free from societal constraints, and while it did deliver on that, it was also chaotic, unsettling, and even frustrating at times. If you’re looking for a raw and unfiltered journey of a woman in 1970s Croatia, this might just be for you.
“What else is love except a kind of blindness.”
Synopsis (spoiler-free, always)
This book follows an unnamed woman, a literature student from Zagreb, who falls for a charming but unreliable man. What starts as a whirlwind romance quickly turns into a toxic and suffocating relationship. Her husband is selfish, a womanizer, and disappears for days at a time, leaving her to fend for herself in unfamiliar cities. Stuck in a cycle of financial and emotional dependence, she slowly realizes she needs to break free not just from him but from the expectations placed on her by her family and society.
“What hurts is what you don’t have. And it hurts, say the experts, because the brain won’t accept that you no longer have what you once did, what it still remembers, and so it turns its absence into the pain of loss.”
My Thoughts
I’ll be honest, this book was a lot. The writing style is intense, almost like reading someone’s unfiltered diary. Although it took me a while to get into, once I did, I couldn’t look away. The main character’s frustration, exhaustion, and quiet desperation all felt so painfully real.
That being said, this book is not an easy or comforting read. The protagonist is stuck in a toxic relationship, and we watch her make bad decision after bad decision, which was both frustrating and heartbreaking. At times, I wanted to shake her and scream, “Just leave him already”, but that’s kind of the point. The book perfectly captures how hard it is to walk away when you have been conditioned to accept suffering as part of love. It actually reminded me of a quote I read in ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower’: We accept the love we think we deserve.
The strongest part of the book is the way it portrays women’s struggles in a world that constantly tells them to stay quiet and move on. The protagonist’s mother is a perfect example. She always prioritizes men’s needs over her daughter’s, reinforcing the idea that women must serve, support, and sacrifice. Breaking free from that mindset is the real battle here, and this book does not offer an easy or neat resolution.
One minor problem, though, was the stream of consciousness style. It made the book a bit hard to follow at times. The lack of structure and the long and winding inner monologues could get overwhelming. But if you are willing to embrace the chaos, I definitely think it’s worth the read!
Happy Reading!
About the Author
Marina Šur Puhlovski is a Croatian writer from Zagreb. She studied comparative literature and philosophy and has written across multiple genres, including novels, essays, and travelogues. She also won the Croatian VBZ Prize with this novel, Wild Woman, for best unpublished novel in 2017.
You can find more about this author on her Goodreads page!
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