This past week, I read Love and Garbage by Ivan Klíma, which took place in the #CzechRepublic (at the time the book was published in 1986, #Czechoslovakia).
The premise of this novel was that our unnamed narrator - an author lives under the weight of Easter Europe in the 1980s and who is writing about the beloved Czech writer, Franz Kafka - sets aside his writing work (as a result of a combination of choice and political pressure) to try his hand at a very different line of work, and lifestyle - that of a city garbage collector in Prague.
As he sweeps the streets of his city, in an exercise to attempt to understand a very different lifestyle of his own and see his landscape from a new perspective, he has lots of time with his thoughts. He reflects on his time as a child in a concentration camp; on the banal and sometimes weird sites he comes across in his new job; on his very longtime tension between his fairly happy marriage and his fairly unhappy extramarital affair; and ultimately, on the fact that since he sees this job as a sort of career tourism, and as a result, how he can never truly relate to his new colleagues.
I really appreciated the premise of this book, and learned a lot about a few experiences I have had little to no exposure to. I struggled (perhaps by the author's design) with the way he presented the two major love relationships of the narrator's life. Throughout the book, I never understood why he strayed from his marriage and especially why he did so for so many years, particularly because his affair was so desperate and needy. I suppose that may be what drives so many people to reach beyond their comfortable, happy circumstances for the unknown - the desire for passion, when neediness and drama can sometimes masquerade as passion.
Ultimately, I enjoyed this book and recommend it!
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