Deset tisuća koraka

Fear of the Blackberry has delighted both literary critics and the wider reading public. Such ratings are pleasing, but at the same time they raise expectations. Simply put, for a second book to be rated as the first, it must be even a little stronger. It needs to be at least a step above. In the second novel, which was so eagerly awaited, the author resorts to a more unusual narrative technique. The narrator addresses her grandmother. Anyone who has read The Blackberry can immediately recognize the reasons why Danijela chooses her mother's mother as the first recipient of her sentences. The listener to the story must be a tolerant, patient, wise and good person. Only with such a person can sincere communication be achieved. Grandma will understand how difficult personal history is in times that are losing all sense of reality and humanity. And that has been the case in recent years. Physical exercise and the belief that we can save ourselves from real dangers by taking refuge in art could have saved our health. The narrator talks about herself to a person she trusts, and it is clear that she is not afraid of exposing herself and commenting on slippery topics. And she packs all of this into real narrative – as the narrator's father would say – little diamonds. After reading Ten Thousand Steps, we will be able to answer two fundamental questions about the reception of a literary work; for whom the novel was written and on whose behalf it speaks. And we will also know that the phenomenon of the second book, no matter how much we have raised the bar of expectations, has been very successfully overcome.