Customer Reviews

My Merry Mornings: Stories From Prague

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This collection of seven short stories, one named for each morning of the week, is a nice introduction to the writing of Ivan Klima. Klima loves to write and in these stories Klima's love for the word shines through. He is a teller of tales and Klima is in his element in the short story medium. The writing style evident in these stories, unlike some of his novels, is simple and accessible to any reader. The simplicity of style is not surprising when one considers that Klima praised Czech playwright and author Karel Capek for exhibiting these same traits in his biography of Capek.

The stories are light but they do reveal some of Klima's world view. In his Tuesday Morning story Klima's narrtaor(and in some of his stories the protagonist is referred to simply as Klima), a Czech writer, is reunited with an old paramour 20 years after she fled Czechoslovakia for the West. They had no emotional relationship but spent an idyllic spring and summer meeting for a tryst every lunch time in a vacant lot in Prague. They meet for lunch upon her return and she asks him why he never left Czechoslovakia. His response is simple: "Because I'd like to go on being a writer, and to be a writer means also to stick up for people whose fate is not a matter of indifference to me. . . All this I can do here, where I grew up."

Pungent, yet understated, sentences work themselves into virtually every story. The Sunday Morning story, which involves torrential flooding in a outlying neighborhhod, begins simply: "This was a year rich in rainfall and police raids." Klima does not hammer the reader over the head with ideology or his world view. Rather, he tells simple stories about the daily lives of the people around him. The social and political atmosphere of the time is certainly present but they are set out as a fact of life that forms the backdrop of the story. The barter system for procuring supplies or the bribes required to pay off vendors is simply there, it is not the central focus of the tale. When the narrator and some colleagues band together to build a garage for their cars on a vacant lot two of the builders go off to steal some building material. The narrator is surprised but moved when his companion explains why he simply cannot steal the needed supplies

Each story tells a small tale and it would reveal a bit too much to describe each individual story. However, they are well written, amusing, and thoughtful. While this is far from Klima's most profound work they do paint a picture of life in Prague as it was lived by Klima and those around them. It is also clear from Merry Mornings that Klima loves Prague. It is his city and he is as attached to it as native Parisian might be to Paris. All in all Merry Mornings serves as an enjoyable introduction to both Klima and Prague.

First of all, I can't recomment Mr. Klima's works highly enough. "My merry mornings" is the first one I came across, and I have since read most of his other (translated) works. Most strongly appealing are his wry understanding of the characters he draws; his ability to mine the emotional depths of even day-to-day situations; and his almost understated depiction of life in the shadow of an east bloc regime.

Hats Off to Klima, this is a wonderful book - satire at the highest level. I am really surprised that Klima had the guts to write this is a communist Czeck (then communist). I do not remember anybody other than Capek who was as brilliant. The translation by George Theiner is also great. Though there are seven stories, one for each day of the week but I promise you will finish it in a couple of days. He brings up the dark side but not in a gloomy way but rather in hilarious fashion mixed with sarcasm which definitely deserves all praises. I will definitely recommend this book as a must buy.

A great collection of seven stories, in which a narrator who seems like the same person (if under varied guises--none of whom smoke!) tells of his encounters against those who buy into the system of secularism, deceit, and denial of the ethical. Whether witnessing an old man watching his wife die in an impersonal hospital, mulling over a fellow worker who claims to have seen a Marian apparition, selling carp to Christmas shoppers, helping a neighbor's child who has literally dropped into his apartment, meeting an old flame returned from affluent exile, listening to a professor who sees phallic symbols rearing rampant in the urban landscape, or boating with religious fanatics, Klima deftly captures the flow of moments that accentuate the survival of the sensitive and the idealistic holdouts who refuse to give in to the system. Even the rants he describes avoid stereotype, and the subtle criticism of the dissident permeates these vignettes in a well-crafted, undogmatic, and moving manner. Although George Theiner (not as photographer but as translator) gives Klima's voice a bit too much of a working-class British inflection, the English version succeeds in its colloquial, unforced fluency. This is what post-1968 Prague must have been like, you think. Far from the Charles Bridge and the Stare Mesto. Grim suburbs, bulldozed fields, damp mattresses, endless queues. Worth remembering today, and to learn from how the Stalinist experiment warped all those under its control.

Ivan Klima is one of the world's great writers. He stayed in Prague, Czechoslavakia during the entire term of Soviet occupation. 'My Merry Mornings' was written during that time, seven lovely stories, one for each day of the week. And though the language (translated) is simple, the work is rich and rewarding to read and experience. I have read a few of Klima's other works, including 'My Golden Trades' which is similar in scope and form to 'Mornings' but the latter is the gem. Klima, like most writers and intellectuals under Soviet rule, had to survive in other ways, like sweeping streets and selling fish, to feed their families and themselves. From such labors are the stories' points of view depicted. This is the kind of book everybody wants to read. When you lend it out, it doesn't come back. Maybe because the person who borrows it finishes it quickly, and talks about it to a friend who reads it, and there it goes next, and onward, and outward...I'm on my third copy. This book was originally printed by Readers International, originated in Louisiana, which used to print one international book each month for its subscribers. 'Mornings' may have been the best book they printed, and that is saying quite a lot.