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'This is lush, luminous fiction.' Oprah 'Exquisitely written - Slouka's rapturous intensity more than justifies comparisons with Ondaatje and Berger' Boyd Tonkin, Independent 'Slouka's prose is always exquisite' Time Out "The novel skilfully conveys the irony of wartime love stories, then end with plot twists that wring out pure romance, in the style of Milan Kundera and Michael Ondaatje.' Sunday Telegraph 'Slouka's novel's power lives in the imaginative effort to portray loss that is inherited and endured as an echo...' Richard Ford
Sunday Times
`A haunting and cleverly constructed narrative'
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
68 of 74 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I came to this book through the Richard & Judy bookclub. Admittedly, it is probably a book I never would have picked up to read otherwise, had it not on their list. But, as I read other reviews for it on Amazon before turning to it, I became quite eager to begin its journey. The positive feedback suggested that it was an engrossing love story, set against the turmoil of war. On the back cover, a couple of sentences from the novel itself also piqued my interest:-
"My mother knew a man during the war. Theirs was a love story, and like any good love story, it left blood on the floor and wreckage in its wake."
However, upon beginning THE VISIBLE WORLD, I slowly began to lose interest.
The book begins with the narrator discussing his early life. His family are Czech, and his homeland seems vague and distant to him - just as the past can so often be. His memory is fragmentary, but there is one issue that seems to hold everything together - that his mother loved another man before she married his father. As you read the first part of the book, you get the sense that he is desperately trying to undertsand his family's history; not just their personal history but also their history in terms of race and culture, and the effects that the war had on them. The second part of the book is the love story - the stroy about his mother and the man that she loved.
Writing this review now, I am quite torn between wanting to express how poignant this book can be and between a sense of disappontment. What I loved about it was how Slouka was able to explore the idea of family members being strangers to those they live with - how circumstances like a World War can make people do extraordinary things; for themselves and their country.
My disappointment comes from my expectations not being met. I think the first part of the book failed to keep my interest enough for me to really care about the love story part. THE VISIBLE WORLD is a slow developer, so
I cannot truly say that it gripped without letting go.
Perhaps my expectations were too high and I was bound to be disappointed. Maybe Slouka's writing style simply does not work for me.
"My mother knew a man during the war. Theirs was a love story, and like any good love story, it left blood on the floor and wreckage in its wake."
However, upon beginning THE VISIBLE WORLD, I slowly began to lose interest.
The book begins with the narrator discussing his early life. His family are Czech, and his homeland seems vague and distant to him - just as the past can so often be. His memory is fragmentary, but there is one issue that seems to hold everything together - that his mother loved another man before she married his father. As you read the first part of the book, you get the sense that he is desperately trying to undertsand his family's history; not just their personal history but also their history in terms of race and culture, and the effects that the war had on them. The second part of the book is the love story - the stroy about his mother and the man that she loved.
Writing this review now, I am quite torn between wanting to express how poignant this book can be and between a sense of disappontment. What I loved about it was how Slouka was able to explore the idea of family members being strangers to those they live with - how circumstances like a World War can make people do extraordinary things; for themselves and their country.
My disappointment comes from my expectations not being met. I think the first part of the book failed to keep my interest enough for me to really care about the love story part. THE VISIBLE WORLD is a slow developer, so
I cannot truly say that it gripped without letting go.
Perhaps my expectations were too high and I was bound to be disappointed. Maybe Slouka's writing style simply does not work for me.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book is not for readers who expect a straight narrative, but for everyone who enjoys an emotive and beautiful writing. For some reason i thought it was an autobiography as the vivid images of central European culture, people and places were so true and beautifully described. It felt like flicking through old photographs of a family that you did not really know, but whose story you had the privilage to peep into. Very very lovely.
20 of 22 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book has had quite mixed reviews that fall into the either very high or very low and I think that's an accurate estimate of how any individual reader will respond. I have to say that I think it's an odd choice for R&J because they tend to choose the obvious 'good reads' that are fairly superficial and, in my opinion, instantly forgettable. This, however, is neither.
As another reviwer here has said, the wartime love story genre usually tends to be full of over-ripe emotions, and (soap) operatic story-lines - this isn't. It's an immensely subtle, elegiac and emotionally-restrained tale of a man's search for a past.
In three parts, the first part is a memoir of an unnamed narrator growing up with Czech emigrant parents in New York. This is both charming and dark with shadows that will stretch into the future.
The second part is a brief intermezzo which takes him to Prague as an adult where he meets various veterans of the war who tell a variety of stories that intersect with, but are not, the story of his parents.
The third part, called a novel, is the narrator's fictional imaginging of what might have been his mother's story and her love for a man who wasn't his father, set in the tense years of 1942.
For a relatively short book (250 pages) this touches all kinds of important themes: the fragility of identity, the extent to which we ever 'know' anyone, even the people closest to us, memory and the fictionalision of our own lives, love, idealism, death.
It's not a strightforward linear narrative which might be one the things that some readers have found problematic, but that is itself one of the themes of the book: the way the past and present are mosaics that shift to tell different stories depending on our own perspective.
Overall I found this is moving book written in confident sometimes poetic but always unpretentious prose that is all the more moving for its very emotional restraint. I started it yesterday afternoon and finished it by midnight. A strong recommendation.
As another reviwer here has said, the wartime love story genre usually tends to be full of over-ripe emotions, and (soap) operatic story-lines - this isn't. It's an immensely subtle, elegiac and emotionally-restrained tale of a man's search for a past.
In three parts, the first part is a memoir of an unnamed narrator growing up with Czech emigrant parents in New York. This is both charming and dark with shadows that will stretch into the future.
The second part is a brief intermezzo which takes him to Prague as an adult where he meets various veterans of the war who tell a variety of stories that intersect with, but are not, the story of his parents.
The third part, called a novel, is the narrator's fictional imaginging of what might have been his mother's story and her love for a man who wasn't his father, set in the tense years of 1942.
For a relatively short book (250 pages) this touches all kinds of important themes: the fragility of identity, the extent to which we ever 'know' anyone, even the people closest to us, memory and the fictionalision of our own lives, love, idealism, death.
It's not a strightforward linear narrative which might be one the things that some readers have found problematic, but that is itself one of the themes of the book: the way the past and present are mosaics that shift to tell different stories depending on our own perspective.
Overall I found this is moving book written in confident sometimes poetic but always unpretentious prose that is all the more moving for its very emotional restraint. I started it yesterday afternoon and finished it by midnight. A strong recommendation.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Not difficult, more than just a story hung on a bit of ww2 research
I'm surprised people found it disjointed or boring.
It's certainly not easy to immediately like the storyteller, troubled by his parent's relationship and his mother's... Read more
It's certainly not easy to immediately like the storyteller, troubled by his parent's relationship and his mother's... Read more
Published 10 months ago by D. J. Keyworth
Beautiful written
I can understand the negative reviews of this book, it does lack some substance & characterisation. However it is a beautifully written book which I found really moving and... Read more
Published 11 months ago by Wren
worst book ever read
like others before from the blurb i really wanted to like this book and its context was something that i would always be interested in when reading a book. Read more
Published 12 months ago by shertbertlemon5
Fine writing perhaps, but not very compelling
As many reviews have already pointed out, there's some lovely writing here. And as other reviewers have also pointed out, it's difficult to care very much about the characters. Read more
Published on 30 Jan 2010 by Phil O'Sofa
Boring and Contrived.
I purchased this book in high hopes of a WWII novel which doesn't centre on Poland, Germany or the USA. Read more
Published on 25 Jan 2010 by princess_pinchie
Not good
I really wanted to like this book but how ever hard I tried I just couldn't get into it. The first of the 3 sections is by far the dullest and I skim read a lot of it. Read more
Published on 16 July 2009 by Abs
A boring read.
I really wanted this to be a good book and Mark Slouka has obviously got a talent for writing BUT I just couldn't get into the characters or the settings. Read more
Published on 22 Jun 2009 by DS
Beautiful writing skills
Let's just say that I was very tempted to give this book four stars for the amazing writing of the author. Read more
Published on 22 Jun 2009 by Rocknrollmommy
Visible World - a masterly evocation
There are those who say 'good books' must be difficult to read. In general I don't agree with that, but in this case, this book is both good, in several senses, and difficult to... Read more
Published on 3 Mar 2009 by Kay Sexton
Everyone should read thisbook...
Remarkable and, at times, quite beautiful prose, raise this book to a literary level beyond just another war story. Read more
Published on 12 Jan 2009 by B. Richmond-O'Neill
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