A review by jessrock
Closely Watched Trains by Bohumil Hrabal

4.0

Somewhere or other I heard that Belle & Sebastian's song "Hurley's Having Dreams" (or at least the line about Hurley dreaming of being a horse in Czechoslovakia) was based on this book, although having read it, I can't for the life of me figure out why. The narrator sits on a dead horse at one point, and there's a minor character who shows up on a horse at another, but that's about it. The story is about a railroad apprentice in Czechoslovakia during the time of WWII. He's depressed, recently attempted suicide, and fears that he's not a real man because he wasn't able to get it on with his ladyfriend the one time that they tried. Owing to a moment of "sexual euphoria," he ends up confronting a train full of Nazis. It was interesting, very understated, and very very short (more of a novella than a novel I suppose). I wasn't blown away by it, but I read about another Hrabal novel on Amazon that sounds really interesting (Too Loud a Solitude) and I'd really like to check that one out sometime soon.