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The View from Stalin's Head
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Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Callow young Americans grapple uneasily with Judaism and homosexuality as they navigate a cruddy, crumbling post-Communist Prague in this debut collection. The 10 hit-or-miss stories capture a narrow spectrum of expatriate life, populated by characters uncomfortable in their own skins; this awkwardness is the focus of Hamburger's best efforts. In "A Man of the Country," the protagonist endures a yearlong semiflirtation with massive, handsome Jirka, growing ever more frustrated ("I'm more than an asexual sidekick or polite, helpful English teacher"), but never quite willing to take the initiative. In "Exile," the artist-pornographer protagonist infiltrates a tiny Jewish community led by a fierce, closeted lesbian and makes friends with an eccentric Czech student of theology. The theology student also appears in "Jerusalem," seduced by insecure American expatriate Rachel after they meet at an Israeli folk-dancing class. Rachel, obsessed by her weight and her nagging Jewish mother, is little more than a caricature; this is also true of Debra, the activist protagonist of "You Say You Want a Revolution" ("She didn't want a family, not the traditional kind. She didn't want diapers and graham crackers and apple juice"), and Sarah, a strident tourist visiting Prague in "This Ground You Are Standing On." Hamburger overshoots the mark with these attempts at satire, but his sketches of oddball Prague natives are sharp and affectionate and his evocation of Prague in the 1990s (cheap Vietnamese markets, tough beef and sour cabbage, expatriate cafes) is vivid and unexpected.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From The Washington Post
Callow young Americans grapple uneasily with Judaism and homosexuality as they navigate a cruddy, crumbling post-Communist Prague in this debut collection. The 10 hit-or-miss stories capture a narrow spectrum of expatriate life, populated by characters uncomfortable in their own skins; this awkwardness is the focus of Hamburger's best efforts. In "A Man of the Country," the protagonist endures a yearlong semiflirtation with massive, handsome Jirka, growing ever more frustrated ("I'm more than an asexual sidekick or polite, helpful English teacher"), but never quite willing to take the initiative. In "Exile," the artist-pornographer protagonist infiltrates a tiny Jewish community led by a fierce, closeted lesbian and makes friends with an eccentric Czech student of theology. The theology student also appears in "Jerusalem," seduced by insecure American expatriate Rachel after they meet at an Israeli folk-dancing class. Rachel, obsessed by her weight and her nagging Jewish mother, is little more than a caricature; this is also true of Debra, the activist protagonist of "You Say You Want a Revolution" ("She didn't want a family, not the traditional kind. She didn't want diapers and graham crackers and apple juice"), and Sarah, a strident tourist visiting Prague in "This Ground You Are Standing On." Hamburger overshoots the mark with these attempts at satire, but his sketches of oddball Prague natives are sharp and affectionate and his evocation of Prague in the 1990s (cheap Vietnamese markets, tough beef and sour cabbage, expatriate cafes) is vivid and unexpected.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From The Washington Post
This debut collection of stories, most of them set in Prague, brings to mind the dream Kenneth Tynan tells of in his diaries in which his friend Antonia Fraser is asked if it's true that she has converted to Judaism. "Yes," she says. "But as Dr. Jonathan Miller once said, 'I'm not a Jew. I'm Jew-ish.' " The narrators of several of these 10 clunky and unpolished tales are American, gay and Jewish, but the most urgent question in the stories is the extent to which the characters will embrace any categorical identity. " 'Art is my religion,' " the narrator says in "Exile." " 'I'm not a big fan of Judaism. It excludes certain groups, like women.' I paused. 'And fags.' " He's not quite comfortable with being a Jew, but he's obsessed with the fact that he's Jewish. His commitment -- even to the religion of art -- is halfhearted at best. In the same story, the narrator asks a Czech friend if he agrees that Milan Kundera is a genius. The friend replies that he's never read Kundera's books, and then the narrator admits to himself that he "only made it halfway through" one of Kundera's novels but had just "wanted to offer a compliment" to his friend's country.
There's a depressing absenc