A thoughtful, superbly written, and, above all, terribly sad book. Some reviewers here have complained about this one's unconventional structure, but both the author and the narrator seem to have started where they were: growing up in the shadow of their parents' lives, which were shaped by unimaginably powerful world-historical forces. To the narrator, who grows up in the United States, his parents' memories of Central Europe have a terrible power and a storybook strageness, which is well-reflected in this section's brittle, haunted prose. His search for them in contemporary Prauge yields little: too much time has passed, and too many have died, during the occupation then or since. The book's third section, in which the narrator and author knowingly fill in the empty spaces in their narrative using fiction, is the book's most coherent, and undoubtedly the book's best. It's a thrilling recounting of the plot to kill Reinhard Heydrich, but also an excruciatingly effective portrait of a terrible time in which a single mistake could lead to one's death, along with the death of countless others. The author doesn't spare us the details here, whether describing all it was necessary to avoid collaborators or the soldiers in the streets or providing a second-by-second reconstruction of the Czech partisan's justly famous assassination operation. This was a tough one to read. I probably shouldn't have read it in quarantine.

But "The Visible World" also a love story, which plays out with such high stakes and such extreme emotions that I often found myself wanting to put it down, just to spare myself some stress. And that's a compliment, mind you. The contrast between the occupation's barbarity and the romantic idyll experienced the by one of the couples in its midst is almost too much to take: the way the plot barrels forward, you'd think the author was writing a thriller. Which he is, in a way, I suppose, but this novel's literary excellence are also too good to go unmentioned. Space in "The Visible World" is neatly split into two halves: underground and overground, and a motif that echoes beautifully throughout all three sections of the novel. We get a beautiful contrast, too, between the deep, almost untouched Czech woods and fascism's forthrightly anti-human aesthetics. We get some beautiful love scenes, and Slouka can make you feel how tangibly death hung over occupied Europe at that point in history. As I mentioned, this was a tough one to read. I probably shouldn't have read it in quarantine. But, whether or not you're used to unconventional narrative structures, I'd recommend it highly. ( )

Beautifully-written story about memory, history and truth. An American of Czech parentage tries to find out about a mysterious man with whom his mother was in love during the war. The unfamiliarity, for me, of the Czech language simply added to the sense of mystery. It was also a fascinating insight into a period of the history of the Czech Republic that I had no idea about. I do, however, agree with some other reviewers that it was difficult to engage fully with the characters. ( )

Moving back and forth in time, story of great beauty and loss. Never read this author before. Especially enjoyed the retelling, through various characters, of folktales and dreams. ( )

Beautiful writing but the plot was a mess - confusing and not clear. ( )

I can see what the author was trying to do with this book, and perhaps if I had read it at a different time, or was in a different mood, or re-read it again, I would get it more than I did on this reading. The book is split into three parts (as a child, as a man, a novelisation), with the author telling the story of his mother and her great love affair with a man who wasn't his father, and how that caused her all the issues he was aware of while growing up.

The first part of the book just takes too long to engage you, the second part is brief and the third part (the novel) is good, but I just didn't feel a lot of affection or a connection with the characters so the emotional conclusion just didn't affect me as much as it seemed to affect some people. I just didn't really care enough to be bothered. The third part of the book does effectively fill in the blanks of earlier in the book, but I just wonder if the story would have benefited from a less unorthodox style of telling the story.

It's well written (although a little flowery in places) and, as I said, I can see what he was trying to do, but for me he just didn't pull it off successfully. ( )