Bringing Up Girls in Bohemia.

Schubert, Peter Z.

It is due, at least in part, to the difficult situation in the Czech economy, that perhaps for the first time in history, books do not sell well in the Czech Republic. Among the very few exceptions are the novels by Michal Viewegh, which are published in - by Czech contemporary standards - huge editions and subsequently reprinted. Moreover, the second of his five books, Bajecna leta pod psa (The Marvelous Dreadful Years; 1992), was made into a movie that was released on 2 April 1997 and currently tops the country's popularity charts. Bringing Up Girls in Bohemia is his penultimate novel, and the first to appear in English. It was originally published in Czech in 1994, was reprinted in 1995 and 1996, and another run is expected in 1997. Moreover, it has been serialized on Czech Radio (1996), and a movie made from the novel was released on 15 May 1997.

The pink cover - both in the English translation and in the Czech original - suggests the genre of a Harlequin romance, and the story confirms such a perception. A young married teacher, the narrator, is hired by a postcommunist nouveau riche to tutor his unhappy daughter, Beata, in creative writing. The girl's love was disappointed by a conniving gigolo, and the real task of the tutor is to free the desperate girl of her depression and bring her back to life. The teacher applies all his intellect and body to this purpose, and eventually, albeit temporarily, succeeds. The savior's hitherto happy marriage collapses, however, just as the girl replaces him by an American English instructor. This relationship does not last long either, and Beata's emotional losses have no end. Ultimately, as she also fails to find solace in religion, Beata commits suicide in her car.

Of course, the reader does not have to perceive the novel as a Harlequin romance. It admits several other approaches: it can be read as the tragedy of a young woman, a witty satire on Czech education, a book about writing books, or an ironic love story. Like the young author's other novels, Bringing Up Girls in Bohemia is very engaging, naturally intelligent, witty, entertaining, and humorous. Unfortunately, however, the humor is sometimes self-fulfilling, and the irony is brought to excess. This is the case, for instance, in the depiction of the school where the narrator teaches. The caricature of education is, as mentioned earlier, just one of the possible approaches to the novel. Viewegh also pays his due to the contemporary trend of writing about writing. Read in this manner, the novel becomes a metatext depicting how he experiences writing Bringing Up Girls in Bohemia, and despite all indications otherwise, that is the book's real topic. The author explains in detail the entire creative process as well as his views on literature. He has repeatedly stated his credo that the artist is to be an entertainer in a world of newly felt cruelty and suffering, and his distaste for "overintellectualized" writing is well known. Thus, he refers here to the novels of Daniela Hodrova, for instance, which the narrator does not understand. Nevertheless, Viewegh quotes Hodrova on writing.

As a matter of fact, the traditional narrative is complicated by numerous (more than fifty) quotations from Czech, English, French, German, and Russian writers, scholars, philosophers, and politicians. This may present a difficulty for English or American readers, at least in the instance of the Czechs referred to, as the book does not contain any explanatory notes. Moreover, it seems that even the translator "A. G. Brain" (pen name of Gerry and Alice Turner) had problems with the names, as testified by a reference to Matejcka (accusative form), for instance, instead of Matejcek, or by the translation of the name Magor as Looney. Similarly, not many readers are likely to understand the reference to krakatit (the name of an explosive in Karel Capek's novel). Moreover, the translation is rather free at times ("gym clothes" become "physical training equipment"; "mother" becomes "matronly"; "17:30" becomes "half past six"; "18-year-old high-schooler" is rendered "grammar school drop-out"; "to further subdivide the half" becomes "to dismember"; Hitchcock is found "extremely" instead of "only" amnsing), and the spelling is occasionally rather unusual ("bungee-jumping" is spelled "bunji-jumping," "Svanda" becomes "Schwanda"), but these should not distract the reader more than an American will be distracted by the frequent Britishisms ("knocking shops" instead of "sleazy hotels" or "cep gatherers" instead of "mushroom-pickers"). Despite these imperfections in translation, however, Bringing Up Girls in Bohemia provides the interested reader with an example - albeit not the best one - of writing by one of the most popular contemporary Czech writers, one who, moreover, writes about present-day life in that country.

Peter Z. Schubert University of Alberta