The Pelican: A Comedy by Martin Michael Driessen: book review

The Pelican (2019) is set in a quiet coastal village of Yugoslavia at the end of the 1980s. Instead of tourists, the most frequent visitors each year are pink pelicans.

Andreji Rubinic is a postman, who rides a postal service bicycle, and Josip Tudjman fixes the funicular (cable car) and sells lottery tickets. Andreji is looking for a new partner, and Josip is unhappily married with two children: Mirko and Katarina.

Andreji steams open other people’s mail, re-seals them and delivers them. Andreji opens a letter written by Josip, discovers a secret, and so begins blackmailing him, demanding money. Andreji has an accident, and Josip discovers a secret, and so begins blackmailing him. The two men don’t know each other, and they don’t know who is blackmailing them. Until one day they meet.

Mutual blackmailing and mutual dependency make a farcical, fun story. Set amid the impending wars, the two characters are at war with themselves and their lost dreams. This is such an interesting, tragicomedy that will keep readers entertained to the end.

MARTINA NICOLLS

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MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of: The Paris Residences of James Joyce (2020), Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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