[Finished 20 January 2012] My first Hribal book, but likely not my last. Hribal begins with familiar territory to me, writing about a Czech family from Chicago (the narrator’s father lived in Cicero, just a couple miles from my own boyhood home). There are two narratives intertwined here, one spanning over half a century, telling the story of a family from the father’s boyhood through the births of seven children and their own growth into adulthood.
Intermingled with this is another story, partly the telling of the family story, partly the contemporary situation of the narrator as he drives to and participates in his parents’ fiftieth anniversary party while he worries about the state of his own marriage. It’s this second story that makes the narrative vibrant, although in the end, Hribal doesn’t quite succeed in making the stories really mesh, although there is a valiant effort as the narrative deconstructs itself in the last chapters.