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2.83 AVERAGE
2.83 AVERAGE
challenging
dark
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
City Sister Silver the real avant-garde thing: a post-modern punk version of T.S. Eliot's "waste land" that literally ends up among the vast detritus of a newly capitalist Prague. Along the way, it is Dante at the end of the twentieth century: a gradual descent to the lowest level of a country on the edge. How Alex Zucker was able to translate this is beyond me.
The story is narrated by a young man named Potok as he drifts through a soon-to-be Czech Republic that has just thrown off communism and has yet to re-orient itself. The basic outline of the multilayered, barely-linear plot is this: Potok lives in Prague and is a member of a "byznys" tribe involved in various smuggling and racketeering activities. A series of complicated events - guns, betrayal, organized crime, Laotians - leaves Potok stranded in a backwater full Deliverance-style hillbillies. He then journeys with girlfriend Černá through ruined towns, wild countryside, and acres of illegal flea markets. After losing Černá, Potok wanders along aimlessly until he winds up living among bums in a Prague trash heap, where a monster lurks and tears its victims to shreds. The novel ends in a Prague transformed: skyscrapers gleam and busy people brag of having "no time." Potok seems to have settled down.
City Sister Silver is wildly meandering, but in a good way. Stream-of-consciousness and mythological storytelling predominate. The prose often reads like poetry. Potok tells his "pseudodroogs" of a drug-induced dream he had in which they were all taken on a tour of an otherworldly Auschwitz. He recalls his time in Berlin as a "Kanak," a member of an international underclass that moved in a parallel universe of drugs, dingy apartments, snuff films, police, and a garbled lingua franca made up of myriad tongues from all over the world. Language and society build upon each other, and Topol's frenzied, chaotic narrative is inseparable from the social anarchy that reigned during and shortly after Czechoslavakia's Velvet Revolution. City Sister Silver is also a highly personal, individualized book whose protagonist adds a human element to a tumultuous setting where other characters seem interchangeable, nothing in byznys or politics is certain, and language is up in the air. Potok may not be the most reliable narrator, but he is sympathetic, a romantic, a drinker, and easy to identify with in his ongoing quest for love and a soulmate. Here is my favorite passage, quoted in full because it's so damn beautiful:
Although City Sister Silver is full of beautiful moments such as this, it also drags at times and the jumbled plot can be more annoying than artistic. But Jáchym Topol's groundbreaking novel is nevertheless both a creative achievement and a window into a culture and a time in history.
Note on the text: The blending of formal and conversational language in English has become commonplace in our literature as the boundaries between the "high" and "low" have long since merged. Although English literature (that is, literature in English) has been reflecting this creative populism for some time now, this was until fairly recently a radical concept in Czech. According to Zucker's introduction, the original Czech publisher of City Sister Silver felt compelled to include a disclaimer stating that Topol's "intent [is] to capture language in its unsystematicness and out-of-jointness." The gulf between literary and spoken Czech is a sizeable one, Zucker explains, and they are bridged by a spectrum of "intermediate levels" for which English has no equivalent.
Original Review
The story is narrated by a young man named Potok as he drifts through a soon-to-be Czech Republic that has just thrown off communism and has yet to re-orient itself. The basic outline of the multilayered, barely-linear plot is this: Potok lives in Prague and is a member of a "byznys" tribe involved in various smuggling and racketeering activities. A series of complicated events - guns, betrayal, organized crime, Laotians - leaves Potok stranded in a backwater full Deliverance-style hillbillies. He then journeys with girlfriend Černá through ruined towns, wild countryside, and acres of illegal flea markets. After losing Černá, Potok wanders along aimlessly until he winds up living among bums in a Prague trash heap, where a monster lurks and tears its victims to shreds. The novel ends in a Prague transformed: skyscrapers gleam and busy people brag of having "no time." Potok seems to have settled down.
City Sister Silver is wildly meandering, but in a good way. Stream-of-consciousness and mythological storytelling predominate. The prose often reads like poetry. Potok tells his "pseudodroogs" of a drug-induced dream he had in which they were all taken on a tour of an otherworldly Auschwitz. He recalls his time in Berlin as a "Kanak," a member of an international underclass that moved in a parallel universe of drugs, dingy apartments, snuff films, police, and a garbled lingua franca made up of myriad tongues from all over the world. Language and society build upon each other, and Topol's frenzied, chaotic narrative is inseparable from the social anarchy that reigned during and shortly after Czechoslavakia's Velvet Revolution. City Sister Silver is also a highly personal, individualized book whose protagonist adds a human element to a tumultuous setting where other characters seem interchangeable, nothing in byznys or politics is certain, and language is up in the air. Potok may not be the most reliable narrator, but he is sympathetic, a romantic, a drinker, and easy to identify with in his ongoing quest for love and a soulmate. Here is my favorite passage, quoted in full because it's so damn beautiful:
…my loved one was a bee and a butterfly and knew how to cut with her claws and her tongue, and I tried too … we learned from each other what was good for the other, and that made both of us stronger … running, and the earth turned beneath us, running by graves and leaping across them, avoiding the bones and glassy stares and empty eyesockets … of wolf skulls … and steering clear of traps and snares, we had experience … with falling stakes and poisoned meat … we made it without harm through the red pack's territory … and met the last of the white wolves, they were wracked with disease … and the big black wolves chased us, but we escaped … we, the gray wolves of the Carpathians, had an age-old war with them, they were surprised we fled, their jaws snapping shut on empty air, they had a hunch it was their turn next, the helicopters were on the way … we ran side by side, our bodies touching … running over the earth as it turned, with the wind whistling in our ears like a lament for every dead pack … and the clicking of our claws made the earth's motion accelerate … we ran over the earth, a mass grave, running away …
Although City Sister Silver is full of beautiful moments such as this, it also drags at times and the jumbled plot can be more annoying than artistic. But Jáchym Topol's groundbreaking novel is nevertheless both a creative achievement and a window into a culture and a time in history.
Note on the text: The blending of formal and conversational language in English has become commonplace in our literature as the boundaries between the "high" and "low" have long since merged. Although English literature (that is, literature in English) has been reflecting this creative populism for some time now, this was until fairly recently a radical concept in Czech. According to Zucker's introduction, the original Czech publisher of City Sister Silver felt compelled to include a disclaimer stating that Topol's "intent [is] to capture language in its unsystematicness and out-of-jointness." The gulf between literary and spoken Czech is a sizeable one, Zucker explains, and they are bridged by a spectrum of "intermediate levels" for which English has no equivalent.
Original Review
This novel is set in post-Velvet Revolution Czech Republic. The sense of unrest, of people not knowing who to trust or how to conduct their lives, is very well represented. The book is narrated by Potok, a young man who is an actor by trade, but part of an "Organization" that makes money in all kinds of underhanded and illegal ways. They are brothers, he and his organization, not just associates and they all have very particular roles. Potok's adventures take dangerous and ill-fated twists as he pursues his "sister"- the woman he loves.
The language in the book is not always obvious in meaning, but it's not difficult once you fall into the story. I think I could read it a dozen more times and get more and more meaning out of it. As I was reading (and I found the book to be compulsively readable, even in the midst of dream sequences that were hard to comprehend), it was easy to let the words wash over me without having to work at the story. The use of ellipses is rampant throughout the book, but I got used to the rhythm of the story quickly. Read this book when you have time and space for it. It's not quick or easy, but it was worth reading. Bone up on the Velvet Revolution a bit, too- helps things make more sense.
Food: a trio of sorbets- peach, beet and green tea. The first is vibrant and full of flavor, lively; the second is earthy, dark, too pungent for some; the last is light and ethereal, hard to catch. There's so much flavor and so many different notes. It doesn't really seem like it all goes together and can be a little overwhelming, but you remember the experience.
The language in the book is not always obvious in meaning, but it's not difficult once you fall into the story. I think I could read it a dozen more times and get more and more meaning out of it. As I was reading (and I found the book to be compulsively readable, even in the midst of dream sequences that were hard to comprehend), it was easy to let the words wash over me without having to work at the story. The use of ellipses is rampant throughout the book, but I got used to the rhythm of the story quickly. Read this book when you have time and space for it. It's not quick or easy, but it was worth reading. Bone up on the Velvet Revolution a bit, too- helps things make more sense.
Food: a trio of sorbets- peach, beet and green tea. The first is vibrant and full of flavor, lively; the second is earthy, dark, too pungent for some; the last is light and ethereal, hard to catch. There's so much flavor and so many different notes. It doesn't really seem like it all goes together and can be a little overwhelming, but you remember the experience.
I am not good at doing reviews. Either I like a book, or I don't, but usually I can't really say why. Sometimes when I hate a book enough, I do have something to say about it though. This is one of those books.
Seriously, wtf?! I have no idea what I just read, and I absolutely do not understand how this ended up on Boxall's 1001 list. Most of the book seemed like a messy dream sequence or bad trip, and the parts that did make sense were just disturbing. Normal punctuation would have been nice too. The amount of "..." in this book made my eyes hurt.
Just, urgh.
Seriously, wtf?! I have no idea what I just read, and I absolutely do not understand how this ended up on Boxall's 1001 list. Most of the book seemed like a messy dream sequence or bad trip, and the parts that did make sense were just disturbing. Normal punctuation would have been nice too. The amount of "..." in this book made my eyes hurt.
Just, urgh.
I don’t know why but I’ve never really warmed to Czech writers , Kundera, Kafka ok I do like Hrabal but at the moment that’s the only exception. Yes I didn’t like City Sister Silver either.
As I stated before I’m not a fan of stream of conscious writing style and the novel is stuffed with it. Not only that but there are puns , double entendres and neologisms but these are lost in translation, despite the fact that the translator does a good job of explaining certain terms.
In essence City Sister Silver deals with Czech history and especially with Prague’s economic boon in the 90’s. The whole thing is seen through the eyes of Potok, who also joins a gang of thieves so that we see Prague through another worldview. There’s also a love story chucked in with works.
However the amount of slang and loss sentences drove me crazy. I knew what was going on but I felt lost and confused at the same time.
To be honest that’s all I can really say about the book, maybe I’m to rigid but experimental novels do tend to leave me in the cold.
As I stated before I’m not a fan of stream of conscious writing style and the novel is stuffed with it. Not only that but there are puns , double entendres and neologisms but these are lost in translation, despite the fact that the translator does a good job of explaining certain terms.
In essence City Sister Silver deals with Czech history and especially with Prague’s economic boon in the 90’s. The whole thing is seen through the eyes of Potok, who also joins a gang of thieves so that we see Prague through another worldview. There’s also a love story chucked in with works.
However the amount of slang and loss sentences drove me crazy. I knew what was going on but I felt lost and confused at the same time.
To be honest that’s all I can really say about the book, maybe I’m to rigid but experimental novels do tend to leave me in the cold.