Growing Up In A Week – Tadpoles by Ante Tomic

 (book recommendation)

In year 1975, Alenka is 12 years old and spends summer vacation with her grandparents. Her days pass by in the company of two boys in the landscape of Slavonian town B, and around low sandbar on the river (popularly known as Texas). In just a few weeks the girl  matured significantly. And growing up do usually happen in this way. Overnight. And then people do not notice that you became a girl, and talk to you like you’re still a kid. Or worse, get to know you as a girl (who grew up suddenly) and do not realise that you’re still a child.

Ante Tomic is a Croatian writer best known for his works What Is A Man Without A Mustache and Nothing Can Surprise Us, which was even turned into a movie Border Post. I liked the Border Post, ergo I like Tomic. And I like Tadpoles – short novel (or long story) about the period of growing up. What I didn’t know before I admit, is that the novel was ordered by food company Podravka (and first draft was named after their spice – Vegeta blues). I further read that a big fuss was raised because this unnatural union between marketing and literature. Imagine, someone payed a writer to write something?! That’s so terrible, they have a nerve! But that aside, I didn’t feel a shred of Vegeta spice here (and I wasn’t bothered by its salinity), it just helped to recreate the taste of understated nostalgia. It seemed to me that Tomic talks about how it used to be, not how it used to be nice (which is a big difference). Stages of growing up remain the same, people from villages and cities think the same, the human character is essentially unchanged (either in 1975 or in 2075); only the environment changed. And the technology of soup making.

I do not know if you remember, but we all were once tadpoles. Physically, we started to remind of people, but when we talked our voice remained strident and childish. And it seems that no one wants to remember that period. Maybe we are just ashamed that we were ashamed? That we were not adjusted (to anyone), and that misunderstanding was widespread. Or is it the fear that, with many, the frog metamorphosis wasn’t even a success. Some people were determined not to develop more than this – a cup of wisdom was empty by the end of that period. In the book, however Alenka, due to the specifics of her age, is mature enough to understand what is going on around her, but does not understand the behavior of adults – maybe even because she doesn’t want to accept that parents are not perfect. And that’s why she sets (seemingly innocent) questions that you do not know what to answer to because they appear to be quite commonsensical.

Tadpoles speak in light and understandable language, but if someone wants to, they can scratch under the surface and ask where do the roots of nationalism and class differences lie. Because in the game of Alenka and her friends (with frequent series of comic turnarounds), we see that children reflect the behavior of adults. Therefore, novel is perhaps not for everyone: you have to love identifiable ex-Yugoslavia motives and understand the differences between people, time and area. And realise that we are all equal: before god – and before a lightning strike.

And although it seems that a few weeks in the small town do not change anything, the point is in seemingly invisible things that shape us. And those barely noticeable joys that we often neglect. As Tomic says:

– If you are looking for some supernatural, mysterious, invisible force that will inexplicable put things in order, bring victory in lost situations, dignity to humiliated and justice to disempowered, I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed. However… If you have more reasonable expectations, miracles are all around us, the small miracles of kindness, honesty and love in an ugly, wild and nervous world. This should be enough. Or at least this is enough for me.