‘Batlava Lake’ by Adam Mars-Jones    (2021) – 97 pages

Adam Mars-Jones just recently published the third installment of his “semi-infinite novel”, ‘Caret’. I did want to read Adam Mars-Jones but I certainly wasn’t ready to commit to reading 752 pages which is the length of ‘Caret’. So instead I searched around among his previous works and came up with ‘Batlava Lake’, published in 2021 and only 97 pages.

‘Batlava Lake’ was rather a fun read. Englishman Barry Ashton is deployed to Pristina, Kosovo as a civil engineer attached to the Royal Engineers corps in the British Army. He is a civilian attached to a NATO peace-keeping mission to rebuild Kosovo in 1999 after it was destroyed by the Serbs.

The tone of this novella is light and conversational as Barry tells us about himself and his time in Kosovo. Batlava Lake is in Pristina; the English called it “Baklava Lake”. Barry is a regular English bloke, in no way enlightened. He calls the soldiers he works with “saps” He calls the Kosovo Muslims, “chogies”.

But Barry makes fun of himself too. He is getting divorced. He makes excuses for himself.

“No good at playing games, no good at lying, rubbish husband material altogether.”

Recalling his time in England with his wife, Barry says stuff like :

“Rather rebuild a broken country any day than face a bridesmaid who didn’t fancy the color of her dress, thinks the color doesn’t suit her complexion!”

Later there is a race across Batlava Lake between the civil engineer corps guys and the British army regulars in makeshift boats that each side built by themselves.

Reading ‘Batlava Lake’, I could imagine Adam Mars-Jones had fun writing in the voice of this wrong-headed but quite typical Englishman.

Batlava Lake

The tone is altogether lighthearted until they discover that the waters of Batlava Lake contain a terrible secret.

‘Batlava Lake’ is entertaining fare that held my interest throughout.

Grade:    A-