pickA Hunger-Artist: Four Stories
I‘m left speechless, my first response is the four stories that make this mini collection are sad as they are beautiful in how they each show the human condition.
The four stories are: First Sorrow; Little Women; A Hunger-Artist; and Josefine the singer, or the Mouse People
#Fiction #books #readaway2024 #eBook
pickI read this one after watching the new Netflix film adaptation called Spaceman with Adam Sandler. As is usually the case, I thought the book was immensely better and having now read it I think the film missed the key themes of the book. The story follows Jakub, a Czechoslovakian astronaut alone in space, the first to venture out to investigate a strange new gas cloud. He encounters an arachnid on his ship. (Cont. in comments 👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻)
pickAn exquisite story about falling and failing in so many ways. Marta is part of a family of Czech descent living in the US. Their family is haunted for generations by a superstition related to defenestration, a deadly fall at a certain point in their life, as if it was written in their genes and as if the fall were calling to be accomplished.
"the two of us poised on a sweet precipice before falling blindly forward into the rest of our lives."
pickThis is a very touching depiction of how it feels to be an immigrant returning to your home country 20 or 30 years later. After the fall of communism in 1989 in Europe, Irena returns from Paris to Prague. She and others like her return led by nostalgia, but the ignorance, under all its forms, displayed by their relatives and former friends shows how absence can create a huge chasm between people, with no hope to reconnect with the past.
pickThis storytelling is very unique which has a lot to do with how much I enjoyed this book. The wording is also quite lyrical. Jakub, a scientist, has a chance of a lifetime to go to space. The story is mostly told in his head as the reader learns about his family, his upbringing, the relationship with his wife, Lenka, and Russian/Czech politics. There‘s also an alien spider friend! The solitariness of Jakub reminds me a bit of Life of Pi.
I didn‘t have time to make a stack this morning so I grabbed these! I LOVE the covers of #Aardvark books! They are so smooth and silky feeling 🧡
#OrangeStack
#AutumnPlease
bailed
