This remarkable novel was the first work of fiction by the prominent Croatian journalist to receive an English translation. It is the story of a Croatian woman living in New York suffering from congenital kidney disease who receives a phone call summoning her to a hospital in Boston where a matching kidney is awaiting her for transplant. The unnamed woman has many friends but is essentially alone, isolated by distance from her family (her parents and daughter live in Europe) and isolated by the disease from everyone else. Prior to the operation her life is both circumscribed and defined by the frequent dialysis treatments that keep her alive--a process that is an inescapable nuisance but also, paradoxically, comforting in its regularity. The narrative chronicles her sensations of helplessness and dread leading up to the operation, her ultimate capitulation to the life-altering event, and her post-transplant life in which she struggles to accept her new identity as a "well" person. The narrative is closely observed and probes in great detail how the woman's relationship with her body and her world changes after the operation. Undeniably, this is a claustrophobic novel. The narrator's observations of the physical reality she faces and her responses to it are relentless. The master stroke here is that even though there is little drama or suspense generated by the events that make up the story, the reader is nonetheless pulled into a taut narrative that is fascinating and emotionally explosive. Not for all tastes but anyone who enjoys fiction that explores aspects of the human psyche will appreciate what the author has done. ( )