esther_habs's review
emotional
reflective
tense
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
abookishtype's review
2.0
Tomáš Zmeškal’s Love Letter in Cuneiform (translated by Alex Zucker), I’m sorry to report, was a frustrating read for me. The publisher’s description—which is what attracted my interest in the first place—only covers a small part of this weirdly constructed novel about betrayal, love, family, forgiveness…and immortality, of all things. While this book does contain a plot thread about a family caught up in the Communist legal bureaucratic nightmare, it takes a lot of tangents. I didn’t get the book that I was expecting. This isn’t the book’s fault; I just wish I had been better prepared...
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type.
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type.
jules_cr's review
emotional
reflective
slow-paced
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
5.0
As the year winds down, I still find myself thinking about Zmeškal's Love Letters in Cuneiform, which I devoured in mid February. The story starts with the wedding of Alice and a cake that reflects heaven, hell and purgatory and spins from there to the stories of her parents, the baker of the fantastic cake, the family doctor and beyond mostly in the against the shadow of Communist Czechoslovakia. Reviews focus on the love story between Josef and Květa (Alice's parents) but the carefully constructed narrative is as much about them as the people around them. The book is beautifully written (and translated), which lets the achronological narratives fill out. For me, everything with the Baker (the cake, his wife, etc), while not a part of the story of Josef and Květa remain with me. There's a very delightful, and very Czech sense of humor to the story as well.
There's leitmotif of what it means to live in Czechoslovakia and be Czech. There's a brilliant illustration where the author inserts himself, allowing the perspective of a half Czech, half Congolese man to briefly illuminate and contrast with later chapters from the perspective of a member of the Czech diaspora.
There's leitmotif of what it means to live in Czechoslovakia and be Czech. There's a brilliant illustration where the author inserts himself, allowing the perspective of a half Czech, half Congolese man to briefly illuminate and contrast with later chapters from the perspective of a member of the Czech diaspora.
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