BOHUMIL HRABAL - CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS

Image: still from the film by Jiří Menzel

My appreciation for Bohumil Hrabal boils down to this: he crams his stories so full of human incident they seem to breathe. His prose flows so fleetly that before you even know it you’ve gotten to know half a dozen townspeople well enough to say hello in the pub. Before reading this novel I’d read all the Hrabal I’d been able to get my hands on in English translation; I’d also seen the film Closely Watched Trains several times. The fact that I’d seen the film and knew the story might explain why I didn’t read this novel sooner. The fact that I’d read all the other Hrabal novels was also a factor in my decision to hold off: I have experienced before the sadness of coming to the end of what an author I admire has written. Read, December 2019.