Member Reviews
This was an incredibly interesting read. I have read Letters to Felice and when I saw this audio book available I jumped at the chance to listen. First the narrator was fantastic, there were a lot of character to keep track of and a lot of different time frames as well, but she gave each character their own voice that made it much easier to track. If you have read Letters to Felice I highly recommend, if you haven’t I recommend both .
Magdaléna Platzová invites us into the enigmatic world of Felice Bauer, once Franz Kafka’s fiancée. This Czech novel deftly blends fact and fiction, spanning time and place. As Felice grapples with selling Kafka’s letters, we glimpse survival, exile, and the kaleidoscope of truth. Yet, beyond pacing, the book leaves us yearning for deeper insight.
I think this book might be best read and not listened to as an audiobook. I often found myself confused or unsure of who was speaking, what was going on, who people were, where we were physically and in time, etc. Also, I felt like the summary was decently interesting, but after finishing this I feel like this story included a lot of nothing; I was waiting for some juicy story about Kafka and Bauer to come out or something, but found myself feeling let down when nothing was uncovered. Overall, I’m not quite sure this one hit the mark so I’m not confident that I would recommend this to others.
This book was alright, I didn't really get into it at first and then kind of half-listened for the rest of it.
I was curious about this novel, unfortunately it did not captivated me as much as I was hoping it will. I couldn't connect with it and I did not feel like there is a particular conflict in this novel - there are a couple, introduced at odd places in the book, but there was nothings to capture my attention.
The novel follows Kafka's former fiancée in an attempt to flesh her out more than his letters did.