The Review of Contemporary Fiction
More than One Life by Miloslava HolubováJason D. Fichtel
Miloslava Holubová. More than One Life. Trans. Alex Zucker with Lyn Coffin and Zdenka Brodska. Northwestern Univ. Press, 1999. 104 pp. $22.95.
More than One Life is Holubová’s first novel to be translated into English from the original Czech. Alternating among narrative, diary entries, and seeming confessionals, More than One Life is the story of a woman’s several attempts to come to terms with her family’s past—to “unload [her] burden and settle [her] debts.” Coming from a rather privileged upbringing, the narrator and her siblings are confronted with an overbearing father. From the start the father is a menacing figure, not allowing his children any freedom, secluding himself from the family, cheating on and then divorcing his wife as she lies near death, and failing in a suicide attempt and then ungratefully accepting the care of his children. As the story progresses, though, our view of the father is complicated as the narrator remembers not only her father’s evils but his brief moments of kindness and compassion as he cares for her sister’s son and takes in a woman who needs shelter. At the conclusion, the family is brought back together ten years after his death, finally to complete their father’s last request of having his ashes spread on Blue Mountain.
Ultimately, Holubová’s novel is a touching portrait of a family, albeit, at times, a flawed portrait. The narrator’s discovery of Eldergent to act as her audience is a bit heavy-handed—clearly the narrator is looking for a lost father figure. In addition, the description and narration periodically suffer from cliché and rather simplistic description. And, while we are told much about the father through the daughter, it seems that the characterization of the narrator is lacking. Still, I hope more of Holubová’s work will find its way into translation to supplement this novel. [Jason D. Fichtel]