Tag: NetGalley

#BookReview #Ad A Brief History of Living Forever by Jaroslav Kalfař

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A Brief History of Living ForeverAbout the Book

When Adela discovers she has a terminal illness, her thoughts turn to Tereza, the child she gave up at birth.

Leaving behind her family in their native Czech village, Adela flies to the United States to find her long-lost daughter before it is too late. Raised in America and living in a fractured New York City, Tereza is working for two suspicious biotech moguls hellbent on immortality.

But before Tereza can imagine a cure for Adela, her mother dies and her body disappears. Narrated by Adela’s restless spirit, the novel blends an immigrant mother’s heart-breaking journey through Reagan’s American dream with her children’s quest to reclaim her in the near future.

Format: eARC (320 pages)                   Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Publication date: 28th March 2023 Genre: Science Fiction

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My Review

I described the author’s first novel, Spaceman of Bohemia, as part space adventure, part chronicle of recent Czech history. It also featured an encounter with a strange companion prompting the protagonist to revisit the events of his early life.  Apart from the space adventure bit, you can tick off all the rest with this latest book – a magical talking carp anyone? – but add a large helping of dystopia.

In the author’s frighteningly plausible scenario, America in 2030 is a country where surveillence of citizens is omnipresent and the boundary between the human brain and AI technology is increasingly thin. Many have adopted an implant that connects the Internet directly into their brain. Commerce is dominated by biotech giants such as the VITA corporation, an entity run by two individuals called Steve and Mark. (Random choice of first names? I don’t think so… ) They are investing billions into research on increasing human longevity.  Adela’s daughter, Tereza, is one of their employees although her research has a much more altruistic motivation.  And America is now governed by the Reclamation Party, a far right, ultra-nationalistic government whose first piece of legislation closed the country’s borders to immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers, and requires those few visitors who do make it to their shores to be electronically tagged and tracked. Unlikely, surely? Climate change has also caused rising sea levels, rendering parts of America uninhabitable.

After only one day with her long-lost daughter, who was adopted by a Danish family as a newborn, Adela dies but lives on in a virtual state able to witness the attempts of her daughter to retrieve her body which has mysteriously disappeared, possibly for ominous reasons. Travelling back to Czechia, Tereza meets her 109-year-old grandmother, the wonderful Babi, and her brother, Roman. He has become infected with the same nationalistic attitudes as those in America.

Between observing their efforts and browsing through the entries in Tereza’s online journal via her implanted device, Adela makes virtual trips back in time to ‘the adventures of her youth’. These include her experiences as a dissident in 1980s Czechoslovakia, as an undocumented immigrant to America and as the wife of a budding filmmaker. We witness their ill-fated attempt to make a film based on the science fiction novel, War of the Newts by Czech author, Karel Čapek, which features an interspecies relationship. (If Wikipedia is to be believed, the author and his novel actually exist.) The latter section felt overlong to me although it did prompt me to search for information about salamanders.

I admired Adela’s resilience. As she herself reflects, ‘I had lived well, loved well, betrayed well, failed well. In all my triumphs and in all my faults, no one – not a cosmic force, not a god, not my children saving my remnants – could ever accuse me of letting life pass me by, of capitulating, of giving in once I’d been broken’.  However I did find her willingness to jettison relationships questionably selfish. ‘In each person’s life, there came a time to cut losses and run’.

A wry humour runs throughout the book that often satirises potential technological developments. I chuckled (and so, I suspect, did the author) at the idea of a publishing house promising ‘to revolutionise the field of literature’ by creating custom books for each reader based on a detailed questionnaire which would enable them to identify a reader’s preferences, such as favourite genres, views about politics and identity, their capacity for empathy, favourite foods and music, etc.

A Brief History of Living Forever is endlessly inventive, occasionally bizarre but never less than entertaining. The author’s vision of a dystopian world dominated by extreme nationalism is scary not least because it seems like it could be a possibility.

I received an advance review copy courtesy of Hodder & Stoughton via NetGalley.

In three words: Inventive, quirky, thought-provoking

Jaroslav KalfarAbout the Author

Jaroslav Kalfař, born in the Czech Republic, immigrated to the United States at the age of fifteen. He is the author of the critically acclaimed debut Spaceman of Behomia, a finalist for the Arthur C. Clarke Award that was translated into fifteen languages and is being made into a major motion picture starring Adam Sandler and twotime Oscar nominee Carey Mulligan. Kalfar holds an MFA from New York University and lives in Brooklyn. (Photo: Goodreads author page)

Connect with Jaroslav
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#BookReview #Ad Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry

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Old God's TimeAbout the Book

Recently retired policeman Tom Kettle is settling into the quiet of his new home, a lean-to annexed to a Victorian castle overlooking the Irish Sea. For months he has barely seen a soul, catching only glimpses of his eccentric landlord and a nervous young mother who has moved in next door. Occasionally, fond memories return, of his family, his beloved wife June and their two children, Winnie and Joe.

But when two former colleagues turn up at his door with questions about a decades-old case, one which Tom never quite came to terms with, he finds himself pulled into the darkest currents of his past.

Format: eARC (272 pages)                  Publisher: Faber & Faber
Publication date: 2nd March 2023 Genre: Literary Fiction

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My Review

Sebastian Barry is the author of a book that has stayed with me ever since I read it back in 2017, the wonderful Days Without End. (I wasn’t alone in loving it because it went on to win the Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction that year.) He’s done it again with Old God’s Time which is just as wonderful and unforgettable.

Written in close third person, the author takes us inside the mind of retired policeman, Tom Kettle.  And what an unsettling and disordered place it is to be as past and present intermingle. Tom remembers some things like they were yesterday. On the other hand, events and conversations that appear to be occurring in the present day turn out to be the product of his imagination or echoes of things that happened long ago.  Some of these moments, especially those concerning his family are truly heartbreaking.

As Tom looks back on his marriage to June, we are witness to an intensely moving love story. Tom may get confused about other things but he can remember the day he met June with perfect clarity, even the dress she wore. And as the story unfolds, we learn that. as children. they both experienced horrific cruelty at the hands of Catholic priests. The details are harrowing and difficult to read but it feels necessary to do so to bear witness to the people who experienced this in real life and to understand the devastating and lasting impact it had on them. Also shocking is, if not actual complicity, then a failure to act by other institutions including the Garda, the police service of Ireland in which Tom himself served.

It’s such a failure that had dreadful consequences for Tom and June, setting off a chain of tragic events.  His resilience in the face of tragedy is humbling. ‘Things happened to people, and some people were required to lift great weights that crushed you if you faltered just for a moment. It was his job not to falter. But every day he faltered. Every day he was crushed, and rose again the following morn…’

There are mesmerising descriptions of the sea, the changing light and weather that Tom observes through the picture window of his flat as he sits in his favourite, ‘sun-faded’ wicker chair smoking a cigarillo. There are also touches of wry humour.

My first thought on finishing the book was, Oh Tom, I wish I could give you a hug; my second was, what a truly brilliant piece of writing. Old God’s Time is the kind of book that, on turning the last page, you want to read all over again. It’s also further proof that a novel doesn’t have to be big to deliver a powerful punch. Old God’s Time is definitely the best book I’ve read so far this year.

You can read an extract from Old God’s Time here. I can also recommend this Waterstones podcast in which Sebastian Barry talks about the book and his approach to writing.

I received a review copy courtesy of Faber & Faber via NetGalley.

In three words: Lyrical, tender, heartbreaking

Try something similar: Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan

SebastianBarryAbout the Author

Sebastian Barry was born in Dublin in 1955. The current Laureate for Irish Fiction, his novels have twice won the Costa Book of the Year award, the Independent Booksellers Award and the Walter Scott Prize. He had two consecutive novels shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize – A Long Long Way (2005) and the top ten bestseller The Secret Scripture (2008) – and has also won the Kerry Group Irish Fiction Prize, the Irish Book Awards Novel of the Year and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. He lives in County Wicklow. (Photo: Publisher author page)