Customer Reviews

The Drowning of a Goldfish

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The first novel I read of Lidmila Sovakova's, this book meticulously placed me into the heart and will of her main character until her life, her experiences, were mine. I recommend this work highly.

Lidmila Sovakova has written a book unlike any I have read. Using the first person narrative, the author unfolds the story of a young woman's quest for intellectual and artistic expression through a series of dreamlike vignettes. The images, however, are so powerful as to create not only the vision, but also the smell and feel of all that is described. Beautifully written, the book's hypnotic quality effortlessly compels its reader forward, making it difficult to put the book down until the last page.

The story concerns itself with a young woman (Goldfish) who, although aware of traditional obligations to her family, retains a deeply personal and burning quest to be college educated in her beloved Prague after the World War II Communist takeover. It is clear that she sees a different path ahead from the one imposed on her by inherited thought, wealth and the Communist Party. Sovakova is so insightful in the presentation of her story that she often writes sympathetically of her character's opponents, providing a realistic balance between the perils of conformity and the importance of personal freedom. Although her character possesses an indomitable spirit and wishes to break the imposing restraints of protocol, she is not harshly accusatory. She is, in fact, a gentle soul, one who sees the world as inflamed with passion and wonderment and desires the freedom to partake of its richness.

The cohesive element of THE DROWNING OF A GOLFISH lies in the young woman's affection for cats. Felines represent beauty and mystery and their love is inspiring. Like the narrator, cats adore freedom and must be given the freedom to love. About to marry Rudolf, a man more satisfying to her family than to herself, she describes her wedding so beautifully, so hypnotically, that the reader will wish for a few more pages of description:

"The nave is flooded with crude light: the statues, leprous beggers, hold out their twisted arms towards me; hideous lizards creep on the gold of the paintings; the flames of the candles choke in their own spittle."

Described more like a funeral than a wedding, the reader is made painfully aware of how alone this young woman really is and how necessary it is for her to find her own way in the world, if only in spirit. The book, in fact, has many such descriptions and often back flashes to idyllic childhood memories, revealing the contrast between desire and harsh reality. In this regard, the reader may feel a need to reread paragraphs or whole pages before moving along so as to recapture certain scenes.

And yet, one realizes that the power of the novel lies in the clarity and brevity of what is being described. Stylistically, the book is exceptional. Without wasting words and maintaining a pace that will not grant release, Sovakova has created a novel that is unique and totally absorbing.

Lidmila Sovakova has written a book unlike any I have read. Using the first person narrative, the author unfolds the story of a young woman's quest for intellectual and artistic expression through a series of dreamlike vignettes. The images, however, are so powerful as to create not only the vision, but also the smell and feel of all that is described. Beautifully written, the books's hypnotic quality effortlessly compels its reader forward, making it difficult to put the book down until the last page.

The story concerns itself with a young woman (Goldfish) who, although aware of traditional obligations to her family, retains a deeply personal and burning quest to be college educated in her beloved Prague after the World War II Communist takeover. It is clear that she sees a different path ahead from the one imposed on her by inherited thought, wealth and the Communist Party. Sovakova is so insightful in the presentation of her story that she often writes sympathetically of her character's opponents, providing a realistic balance between the perils of conformiy and the importance of personal freedom. Although her character possesses an indomitable spirit and wishes to break the imposing restraints of protocol, she is not harshly accusatory. She is, in fact, a gentle soul, one who sees the world as inflamed with passion and wonderment and desires the freedom to partake of its richness.

The coheasive element of THE DROWNING OF A GOLFISH lies in the young woman's afection for cats. Felines represent beauty and mystery and their love is inspiring. Like the narrator, cats adore freedom and must be given the freedom to love. About to marry Rudolf, a man more satisfying to her family than to herself, she describes her wedding so beautifully, so hypnotically, that the reader will wish for a few more pages of description:

"The nave is flooded with crude light: the statues, leprous beggers, hold out their twisted arms towards me; hideous lizards creep on the gold of the paintings; the flames of the candles choke in their own spittle."

Described more like a funeral than a wedding, the reader is made painfully aware of how alone this young woman really is and how necessary it is for her to find her own way in the world, if only in spirit. The book, in fact, has many such descriptions and often back flashes to iyllic childhood memories, revealing the contrast between desire and harsh reality. In this regard, the reader may feel a need to reread paragraphs or whole pages before moving along so as to recapture certain scenes.

And yet, one realizes that the power of the novel lies in the clarity and brevity of what is being described. Stylistically, the book is exceptional. Without wasting words and maintaining a pace that will not grant release, Sovakova has created a novel that is unique and totally absoring.

LOS ANGELES TIMES (November) THE DROWNING OF A GOLDFISH byLidmila Sovakova (The Permanent Press} "If I contemplate thedesires of my life... the absolute and the most intricate attraction I have never known concerns cats," remarks the narrator of this subtle, slender novel, a young woman who grows up in the Czechoslovakia of the Nazi occupation and the Communist takeover after the war. The child of a bourgeois banking family, she is rejected at university by the new order. She falls ill as a result of a gruelling job moving crates in an ice-cold factory and enters a hospital, where she meets Rudolf, a sexist, amoral doctor she eventually marries to avoid returning to the factory. Then a student gives her a beautiful Siamese she must hide in her apartment. The arrival of Iris, the cat, brings loss as well as new opportunity to the narrator's life. In just a few strokes, Sovakova lovingly conveys fleeting moments of a small child's world in pre-World War II Czechoslovakia - images of elegant ladies in pearls, shaded gardens, creme-caramel. Her imagistic writing works well in the longer section of this novel, the drab world of Stalinist Eastern Europe. Georgia Jones-Davis

Jim Kobak's KIRKUS REVIEWS

Sovakova, Lidmila THE DROWNING OF A GOLDFISH Permanent Press

A promising debut by Czech expatriate Sovakova, now living in Paris, who appears here with her first novel, which won the European Prize for Fiction in 1984. The young woman narrator experiences first the harshness of the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, then the subsequent Communist takeover. Eager to fulfil her father's ambitions for her, she is determined to have a career, not to be sidetracked into marriage and children. By her family is punished by the Communists, and she, despite a brilliant record, is denied entrance to the university. in the meantime, the physically exhausting job she holds precipitates a collapse, and she is sent to a hospital, where she meets a young doctor, whose marriage proposal she accepts because she knows she will not survive if she returns to her old job. Rudolf, selfish and demanding, wants her to be his slave, but once she finds a job teaching Russian to factory workers she gains a degree of freedom. Then her student's gift of Iris, a cat, provokes a crisis - she and Rudolf must find alternate accommodation. Though her hardships, her deepest affections have been reserved for cats -"the absolute and most intricate attraction I have ever known concerns cats." When Iris dies during the move to the larger apartment that her colleagues have found her, the young woman grieves. But she also realises that the more spacious apartment, which will free her from Rudolf, together with an opportunity to study Russian at the university, will be her salvation. "There is no cruelty against the dead," she reluctantly concludes. She can see a way out at last. A moving and understated tale of courage by a young survivor living in a society where just to endure is sufficient victory. An accomplished new voice from Europe. END