Of Kids And Parents

Of Kids and Parents (2008) by Emil Hakl – Twisted Spoon Press – Good Condition

Family conversations are wonderful things.

They can begin with beer, weather, an old story or a harmless question and, with very little encouragement, end up somewhere around regret, sex, communism, death, resentment, childhood trauma and who exactly ruined whose life.

In Of Kids and Parents, Czech writer Emil Hakl gives us a father and son walking, drinking and talking their way through Prague, which sounds pleasantly civilised until it becomes clear that decades of accumulated family history have joined them for the evening.

The basic set-up is beautifully simple: a middle-aged son spends time with his elderly father. They wander through the city, stop for drinks, remember the past, disagree about it, remember it differently, change the subject, return to it, insult one another slightly, become unexpectedly tender and then resume arguing.

In other words, a perfectly normal family outing.

What emerges is a sharp, funny and sometimes melancholy portrait of two generations trying to understand one another while carrying very different versions of the twentieth century around in their heads.

The father has lived through war, authoritarian rule, political upheaval and the strange compromises required simply to get on with ordinary life. The son belongs to another generation entirely, viewing both his father and the history surrounding him with a mixture of affection, irritation, scepticism and the unavoidable knowledge that he is becoming older himself.

Their conversation moves effortlessly between the profound and the ridiculous.

One moment they are touching on politics, history or mortality.

The next they are discussing women, food, drink or some ancient family grievance that apparently remains legally actionable several decades later.

Hakl is particularly good at the strange mixture of intimacy and hostility found in long-established family relationships. These are people who can say things to one another that would cause immediate diplomatic relations to be severed between ordinary acquaintances, yet who remain connected by something much stronger than politeness.

The result is less a conventional plot-driven novel than a prolonged, wonderfully observed encounter between two men who know each other extremely well and understand each other considerably less.

Prague itself provides an atmospheric backdrop: streets, pubs and familiar places becoming part of the conversation as personal memory and national history overlap. The city is not merely scenery but a landscape through which both men carry their own associations, stories and versions of what has happened there.

There is also an appealing looseness to the book. Conversations wander because real conversations wander. Important subjects arrive without warning and disappear before anyone has properly resolved them. Memories contradict one another. Serious revelations sit next to jokes. Nobody produces a neat concluding statement explaining what the family has learned.

Which is reassuring, because actual families almost never do that either.

Published in English by Twisted Spoon Press in 2008, this is one of those intriguing works of modern European fiction that can feel both very specifically Czech and completely universal. You do not need to know Prague, Czech history or the particular politics of Central Europe to recognise the underlying situation: an adult child realising that a parent is simultaneously a familiar figure, an irritating relative and an entire human life containing decades of experiences that may never be fully understood.

The humour keeps the book from sinking into solemnity. Hakl allows affection and absurdity to coexist, producing the sort of dialogue in which a profound observation about life may be immediately followed by somebody ordering another drink.

This copy is in Good condition, meaning it has survived its own encounters with parents, children, bookshelves and previous ownership without developing any serious family disputes of which we are aware.

ISBN 9788086264301.

Ideal for readers of contemporary European fiction, Czech literature, conversational novels, complicated family relationships, dark humour and books in which two people can spend an enormous amount of time together while still avoiding saying precisely what they mean.

Also suitable for anyone who has ever gone for a quiet drink with a parent and accidentally ended up discussing forty years of unresolved history.

Sold by Crappy Old Books — where family arguments are not included, generational misunderstandings are plentiful, and nobody is required to phone their parents after purchase.

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