In Lilijana Homovec’s second novel, In the Time of Tall Grasses, the past does not return as a memory, but as something that has never truly gone away.
Twenty-five years after summers filled with music, the sea, and youthful carefree days, Bruno and Nevio meet again. The news of the death of Greta, a former member of their band and Bruno’s lover, opens up a story that gradually branches out into the lives of five women of different generations – Greta, Gloria, Adelina, Valerija, and Roberta.
The novel explores love and infidelity, motherhood and childlessness, shame, family, sexual violence, intergenerational wounds, and the courage to finally take one’s life into one’s own hands. The present and the past come together like pieces of a mosaic, until it becomes clear how deeply we are inscribed in the lives of others.
In the Time of Tall Grasses is a novel about a past that catches up with us – and about the possibility that, despite everything, it need not define us forever.
🔴 SELECTED FOR PRIMORCI BEREMO FOR THE SECOND CONSECUTIVE YEAR
Lilijana Homovec’s debut novel, Someone Always Leaves First (Nekdo vedno odide prvi), was selected for the Primorci beremo 2025 reading project. A year later, libraries in Slovenia’s Primorska region also included her second novel, In the Time of Tall Grasses, in the Primorci beremo 2026 selection.
They wrote about the novel:
“A fragile and sensitive narrative reveals the present and the past that is inseparable from it.”
They particularly emphasise the mosaic structure of the narrative and the five women of different generations, each of whom confronts, in her own way, the wounds of the past, love, motherhood, shame, and infidelity.
Read the presentation of the novel in the Primorci beremo 2026 project
Bukla: The Past That Does Not Disappear
The novel was also featured in a separate presentation in issue 192 of Bukla magazine. Tia Kovačič wrote about it, particularly highlighting the two temporal planes, the gradual piecing together of the stories, and the intertwining life paths of women from different generations.
The news of Greta’s death forces Bruno to confront the decisions he made in his youth, but the novel does not stop at his perspective. Gradually, the women’s stories move to the foreground, along with the question of whether the past necessarily determines our future as well.
Kovačič concludes her piece with the thought:
“Courage and forgiveness open up new directions.”
Read the presentation in Bukla 192
Ana Kalin: Silence Drowned Out the Music
Ana Kalin wrote a longer critical and accompanying essay on the novel, entitled Silence Drowned Out the Music (Tišina je preglasila glasbo), which is also published at the end of the book.
Kalin reads the novel as a puzzle of relationships and life decisions. The initial meeting between Bruno and Nevio gradually gives way to a much broader network of women’s lives, in which an important question emerges: how much freedom are women allowed in the first place, and how much must they fight for themselves?
“The story is carried by heroines of all ages.”
Greta, Gloria, Adelina, Valerija, and Roberta are women from different generations and backgrounds, yet they are, in different ways, caught in social expectations, economic dependence, traumatic family patterns, and ideas about what they are supposed to be like.
Kalin particularly emphasises that the novel also raises the question of different forms of family: is a family truly defined by blood ties, or can it also be formed by people who remain by one another’s side when the original family structures fail?
Read Ana Kalin’s essay “Silence Drowned Out the Music”
Radio AGORA: Story Generators – Lilijana Homovec
On 23 December 2025, an almost hour-long episode of Story Generators (Generatorji zgodb) on Radio AGORA 105 I 5 was devoted to the novel In the Time of Tall Grasses. The programme was edited by Gabriela Babnik Ouattara.
The conversation revolves around the past that persists in the present, as well as the destinies of five women, lost opportunities, courage, and the need for freedom.
The programme’s presentation particularly emphasises that, despite their different paths in life, all the heroines are united by a desire to “breathe again” and to write their own lives.
The programme also raises questions that lie at the very heart of the novel: Where is home? How far does forgiveness extend? Can we truly escape our past?
Listen to Story Generators – Lilijana Homovec: In the Time of Tall Grasses
Excerpts from the Novel
Several excerpts from the novel have also been published in Jantarna lastovka.
In the excerpt Retro, Bruno and Nevio find themselves together after many years, shortly before Greta’s funeral. Memories of their youth, music, and lost opportunities slowly undermine their understanding of what actually happened.
In the excerpt As Before (Kot nekoč), Bruno, by the sea, truly looks back at his own youth for the first time and senses that his safe, settled existence may not be as solid as he had imagined.
The Novel Among Readers and in Libraries
In February 2026, the novel was presented at the France Bevk Public Library in Nova Gorica, where Gabriela Babnik Ouattara, the novel’s editor, spoke with Lilijana Homovec, while Leon Rudolf provided musical accompaniment for the evening.
In April, In the Time of Tall Grasses was also featured at the Ljubljana City Library as part of the Reading Mosaics (Mozaiki branja) series, alongside the novel Nostalgia for the Future (Nostalgija po prihodnosti). On this occasion, the Ljubljana City Library described Homovec’s novel as a sensitive, almost lyrical narrative about different forms of family, growing up, and intimate transformations.
When Silence Drowns Out the Music
In the Time of Tall Grasses begins with two men returning to their youth, but gradually transforms into a novel about women.
About Greta, who rejects a relationship in which she is not respected. About Gloria, who must redefine family. About Roberta and her decision to live without children. About Adelina, who flees violence. About Valerija, who needs more time to admit to herself what has been in front of her all along.
Their stories pose the same question in different forms: how long can a person live a life that others have written for them?
Lilijana Homovec does not offer a single model of family, a single kind of love, or a single correct way of living. Her heroines are vulnerable, often trapped in circumstances they did not choose, yet sooner or later they all attempt to shift the boundaries of their world.
And when all the pieces of the narrative finally come together, something quieter than great revelations remains: the possibility of reconciliation with oneself.
Silence has drowned out the music.
