Hoping for a read that would catch the energy, hope and heartbreak of 1968-69, a monumental time of change around the world, led primarily by young, idealistic people, I eagerly checked out this novel from my local public library. Thinking that it would offer some insights into the events of the Prague Spring, a political uprising of students and other intellectuals against the Communist rule of Czechoslovakia, I plunged into the book.
About seventy pages in, I abandoned it. It is really a pair of slutty tales presented from what appears to be a misogynistic viewpoint, with 1968 Prague as a mere background. There are two couples: one a pair of English students, he from working-class Sheffield, she from the Home Counties. The class warfare angle there comes at the reader like a blunt instrument. The other couple is (he) a British diplomat assigned to the British embassy in Prague and (she), the younger Czech student with whom he quickly begins an affair when his more proper English girlfriend returns to England. His bed is barely cold before he starts rewarming it. My time is better spent on other things.
However, having done my author research, I am going to try this writer once more with Trapeze, also an espionage novel, but with a female protagonist. As an optimist, I like to take a second chance and see where it goes.
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