I just didn't get it. ( )

My review of this book can be found on my YouTube Vlog at:

https://youtu.be/WXVgfnhQq3Q

Enjoy!

A book club pick ;)

Well… Where do I even start? First of all: dear book club, I am very sorry. It was my suggestion. It sounded interesting! I have no other excuse.

The writing is competent, the kind of writing that wins competitions. Unfortunately, I don’t mean it as a compliment. Yes, there are harrowing pages about Czechoslovakia under communism, Czech Republic after the Velvet revolution, generational trauma etc. There is some deadpan stuff, where the author seems to make fun of nationalism – or so I think; surely, he cannot be serious about “yeah, aren’t we a great country, please look at us” all over the book. There is a lot of love for Prague, the city comes alive in beautiful ways sometimes. But the text quickly grows extremely pretentious, quasi-philosophical, rambling, with pages and pages of musings and descriptions that go on forever and ever and ever and ever and ever, can somebody make this book end already, and ever and ever and ever, please stop…

The Czech space programme that comes out of nowhere is ridiculous. The astronaut selection and astronaut training (what we see of it, anyway) are ridiculous. The instantaneous video communication and live blogging sessions (!) when Jakub the astronaut is traveling towards Venus are ridiculous squared. We know what happens to astronauts’ bodies after months in space, and the author does talk about this – so, surviving the stuff that Jakub survives towards the end of the book
is beyond ridiculous.

Also, Jakub, with all his trauma, has no business being an astronaut. He also has no business being married to another human being. Getting Lenka’s perspective on things at the end of the book felt good: take that, you selfish idiot! I don’t mind flawed, annoying characters, as my book friends know. Just put them in better books, please.

The alien spider (or whatever the hell it was) was somewhat fun. I can understand the Nutella obsession (I don’t like it myself, but then there is chocolate). It certainly wasn’t enough to save this book.

The ending is as pretentious as the rest. I was planning on giving the book two stars. I got so annoyed while writing this, though, that it turned into my first one-star review of 2024! I need therapy after this, good book therapy. ( )

This splenetic novel comes billed as a thought-provoking, whimsical sky-fy romp, which characeristics are difficult to notice. In point of fact, alternate chapters carry out this theme, but the alternate chapters, which are much longer, have the eponymous protagonist reminiscing about the indignities visited upon his family after the Velvet Revolution to enact revenge because his father was a Communist functionary. Dreary and depressing, these are mostly uninteresting. As for the sky-fy plot, it finds the protagonist heading on a Venutian mission with his only company a space creature who seems benign but also keeps his distance and seems as though he might have something up his octopod sleeves. This is somewhat more interesting, but this plot is hamstrung by the unsympathetic protagonist moaning alternatively about his wife and her annoying personality and that she has left him. I didn't blame her a bit, and followed suit after about a week of wasted time. ( )

There's a space-travel story in Spaceman of Bohemia and a good one, certainly, but that's not what this book is. It's much more than that. As a matter of fact, this is pretty much the most Czech book I've ever read. Kafka, Hašek, Čapek, and even Havel seem to talk through this book, a rumination on the place of a life in the universe. You can't have a Czech without his people, his home, his trademark bitter-absurd perspective; Kalfař brings all his into play here, casually mixing sacred and profane, nostalgia and bitterness, hope and disgust, outer space and downtown Prague. The first chapter lets the reader know what's in store: a space launch amid fanfare followed by childhood reminiscence of a backyard hog butchering, and a family curse from a revolution that seems to have not yet ended.

I've had the good fortune to spend a good amount of time living and working in the Czech Republic; this book brings so many smells and tastes to mind, the voices of my Czech friends, and the mixture of bullshit and philosophy that's inevitable. Kalfař has really accomplished something fine to bring so much into such a brief novel, and line weighty subject matter with dry, absurd humor. Samozřejmě. ( )