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Year of the Frog: A Novel (1985)

di Martin M. Simecka

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734362,115 (3.38)6
Set in Czechoslovakia in the early 1980s, during the waning years of Communist rule, Martin M. Simecka's startlingly original first novel, The Year of the Frog, shows a young man struggling to understand the circumstances of his life. Simecka, born in Bratislava in 1957, is the son of a prominent Czechoslovak intellectual who was imprisoned for his dissident beliefs. Though not overtly political, Simecka's novel is unabashedly autobiographical. First published in installments in the underground Czechoslovak press, it was reissued in one volume after the lifting of restrictions. Written in engagingly simple, unadorned prose, The Year of the Frog follows the fortunes of Milan, a young intellectual forbidden to attend college because of his father's political activities. Unable to pursue his studies and under surveillance by the authorities, who frequently trail him in their yellow-and-white Zhiguli cars, Milan takes a succession of menial jobs, first as a surgical orderly in a hospital, where he witnesses death on a regular basis, and then as a clerk in a perpetually understocked hardware store, and then again in a hospital, this time as an assistant in a maternity ward. After Milan's father is arrested, his mother, a diabetic, spends her days pining for her husband and listening to the Voice of America over Viennese radio. Once, following a trip to Poland, Milan himself is briefly detained by the police. But the grimness of Milan's day-to-day existence cannot blunt his ever-agile, ever-questioning intellect, nor can it diminish the joy he derives from his two great passions: long-distance running, which he pursues with almost Zen-like dedication through the streets of Bratislava and thesurrounding countryside, and Tania, a university student with whom he falls in love and with whom he discovers that the world, even one as circumscribed as his own Communist-controlled one, is full of possibilities. Milan's… (altro)
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In case you didn't know (I didn't), the Pegasus Prize for Literature is awarded for "distinguished works of fiction from foreign authors whose literature is rarely translated into English."

This story by Czech writer Martin Šimečka is set about a decade before the fall of communism and follows Milan, barred from university because of a dissident father, in his struggle to find meaning and identity in his life. His days are filled with unskilled jobs he doesn't really want, a passion for cross-country running and his relationship with an almost unbelievably perfect girlfriend, Tania.

There are moments in this book that astonished me with how real they seemed. Milan's anguish about a patient dying, the sensation of being punched in the gut when you suddenly wonder about a partner's fidelity, all these resonated within me more than most books have managed. Had the entire book maintained that level, this would have been a 4½ or 5 star book.

Unfortunately, these were little gems set into a story that had no real spark. For all the pseudo-philosophizing Milan does—and I don't fault the author for that; it seems like what a young man would do—I was left with a sentiment of, "and so?" As a reader, I felt I was being led to some powerful vantage point from which to look at life, relationships, communism...I don't know, something, anything...and, yet, the spark never happened and the moment was lost.

I'm ambivalent. ( )
  TadAD | Feb 5, 2010 |
This is a romance novel, with a coming-of-age story, narrated by a young native of Czechoslovakia named Milan. The story and the writing are both troubling in an almost indefinable way. The main character is given to naive and pleasant-not plaintive-rants of philosophy, as well as long accounts of particular running instances, such as feelings in his thighs, eyes, feet and breathe. The paeans to going to a higher level of consciousness are mirrored in his rhapsodic documentaries on caressing and snuggling with his girlfriend Tania. Interspersed with the running and romance come pleasing vignettes of his work life in a Communist regime, where it seems that finding a job is presumed not hard. A medley of interesting and undeveloped characters finds its way into his work arena. Also troubling is his time working in a hospital, not so much due to the delicate subject matter, but due to his lack of overt politicization of the topic.

It seems either to author is so brilliant that he's deliberately writing a book from the naive point-of-view with no overt political cues in order to let the reader struggle with their own interpretations of the cultural, moral, and human pressures; or the author misses opportunities to write a more taut, driven, compact, powerful story. The romance between Tania and Milan seems like science fiction--if a relationship fraught with seemingly no daily arguments, no conflict, little or no jealousy, and a superabundance of appreciation, wonder, respect, dependence, and love really does exist, it must be so rare as to need to be documented. A tremendously realistic book that would be appreciated by romantics, poets and philosophers. ( )
  shawnd | Jul 12, 2009 |
One of my favourite books of recent memory. The story concerns Milan, a young man banned from college in Bratislava by the communist authorities because of his father's politics. Milan engages in a series of dead end menial jobs in hospitals and shops, witnessing firsthand the depressing fragility of humanity and scarcity of moments of beauty in 1980s Slovakia. He finds his own beauty in his girlfriend Tania and his love of running, both of which provide the book with a radiance, but also with its true moments of fear, when it looks possible that he may lose one or the other. Breathtakingly simple, bleakly depressing and beautifully moving on occasions, Milan's thoughts and actions are largely unremarkable, but his search for beauty on the claustrophobic streets of his home town is sad and wonderful in equal measure. One of my favourite reads of this year, without a doubt.
  GlebtheDancer | Jun 16, 2009 |
How I wish I could like this book! The author is born in my hometown of Bratislava, at almost the same time as I. He describes surroundings I have walked; his characters have names I am familiar with; they are unmistakably Slovak. The book has an introduction by Vaclav Havel, and blurbs from reputable critical sources. And yet...the book just falls flat. The protagonist is dull. The situations he finds himself in are yawn-inducing. The plot is totally predictable. And the prose is painful. “Passion is a gift, wherever it comes from, and attracts me so strongly perhaps because I have never felt its destructive power. A wave of passion could never wash away those sober thoughts that corrode the brain like poison. Now she was flowing into me through the hot tenderness of her mouth; she was addressing me with the desperate, merciless pressure of her perfect teeth.” (171) Ouch! And this is interspersed with passages of philosophising, with not a spark of originality. The book does show life in Czechoslovakia under communism but there are much superior books, in Czech, showing that much more vividly, with Salivarova’s Summer in Prague just one of many examples. ( )
1 vota polutropos | Jan 14, 2009 |
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Set in Czechoslovakia in the early 1980s, during the waning years of Communist rule, Martin M. Simecka's startlingly original first novel, The Year of the Frog, shows a young man struggling to understand the circumstances of his life. Simecka, born in Bratislava in 1957, is the son of a prominent Czechoslovak intellectual who was imprisoned for his dissident beliefs. Though not overtly political, Simecka's novel is unabashedly autobiographical. First published in installments in the underground Czechoslovak press, it was reissued in one volume after the lifting of restrictions. Written in engagingly simple, unadorned prose, The Year of the Frog follows the fortunes of Milan, a young intellectual forbidden to attend college because of his father's political activities. Unable to pursue his studies and under surveillance by the authorities, who frequently trail him in their yellow-and-white Zhiguli cars, Milan takes a succession of menial jobs, first as a surgical orderly in a hospital, where he witnesses death on a regular basis, and then as a clerk in a perpetually understocked hardware store, and then again in a hospital, this time as an assistant in a maternity ward. After Milan's father is arrested, his mother, a diabetic, spends her days pining for her husband and listening to the Voice of America over Viennese radio. Once, following a trip to Poland, Milan himself is briefly detained by the police. But the grimness of Milan's day-to-day existence cannot blunt his ever-agile, ever-questioning intellect, nor can it diminish the joy he derives from his two great passions: long-distance running, which he pursues with almost Zen-like dedication through the streets of Bratislava and thesurrounding countryside, and Tania, a university student with whom he falls in love and with whom he discovers that the world, even one as circumscribed as his own Communist-controlled one, is full of possibilities. Milan's

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