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Stručná historie věčného života
Když se Adéla dozví, že je nevyléčitelně nemocná, upnou se její myšlenky k Tereze – dceři, kterou před čtyřiceti lety hned po porodu opustila. V Česku tak zanechá dospělého syna Romana a vydá se do Spojených států, kde Tereza vyvíjí lék zajišťující nesmrtelnost. Než ale stačí matce pomoci, Adéla za záhadných okolností umírá. Tereza s Romanem se neznají, ale teď musí spojit síly, aby matčiny ostatky vrátili domů. Podaří se jim to i přese všechna nebezpečí technokratické diktatury, v niž se Amerika proměnila?
„Geniální... Kalfař vykresluje mnoho vtipných a mrazivých souvislostí mezi komunistickou tajnou policií z dob studené války a svou představou budoucí fašistické Ameriky... Se sklonem k satiře, břitkému humoru a s přesvědčivými emocemi vybudoval věrohodně děsivý svět.“ Publishers Weekly
„Geniální... Kalfař vykresluje mnoho vtipných a mrazivých souvislostí mezi komunistickou tajnou policií z dob studené války a svou představou budoucí fašistické Ameriky... Se sklonem k satiře, břitkému humoru a s přesvědčivými emocemi vybudoval věrohodně děsivý svět.“ Publishers Weekly
Hardcover
First published March 28, 2023
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About the author
Jaroslav Kalfar
5 books315 followersDear Reader,
My name is Jaroslav Kalfař. I was born into a revolution in Prague, Czech Republic, where I began writing short stories at the wondrous age of five. I immigrated to the United States at the age of fifteen to pursue writing in English. I studied writing and literature at New York University, and during my time there I wrote an early draft of my debut novel, Spaceman of Bohemia.
Spaceman was a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, The Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and a nominee for the Dublin Literary Award. The book has been published in fourteen languages so far. A film adaptation directed by Johan Renck, starring Adam Sandler, Carey Mulligan, and Paul Dano, is coming to Netflix in 2022.
In 2018, I was honored to receive the prestigious fiction fellowship from the National Endowments for the Arts, the highlight of my career so far.
I live in Brooklyn, where I split my time between writing novels and screenplays, and devouring any book I can get my hands on. I love odd books that play with genre expectations, reflect the strangest parts of life which can be found both in the mundane and the extraordinary.
I travel back to the Czech Republic as often as possible, to reconnect with my family, my language, my culture and history. I am grateful to have multiple homes, as each provides its own unique inspiration, stories, texture of living.
How unlikely, yet here we are. It's wonderful to meet you.
My name is Jaroslav Kalfař. I was born into a revolution in Prague, Czech Republic, where I began writing short stories at the wondrous age of five. I immigrated to the United States at the age of fifteen to pursue writing in English. I studied writing and literature at New York University, and during my time there I wrote an early draft of my debut novel, Spaceman of Bohemia.
Spaceman was a finalist for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, The Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and a nominee for the Dublin Literary Award. The book has been published in fourteen languages so far. A film adaptation directed by Johan Renck, starring Adam Sandler, Carey Mulligan, and Paul Dano, is coming to Netflix in 2022.
In 2018, I was honored to receive the prestigious fiction fellowship from the National Endowments for the Arts, the highlight of my career so far.
I live in Brooklyn, where I split my time between writing novels and screenplays, and devouring any book I can get my hands on. I love odd books that play with genre expectations, reflect the strangest parts of life which can be found both in the mundane and the extraordinary.
I travel back to the Czech Republic as often as possible, to reconnect with my family, my language, my culture and history. I am grateful to have multiple homes, as each provides its own unique inspiration, stories, texture of living.
How unlikely, yet here we are. It's wonderful to meet you.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 134 reviews
May 27, 2023
A Brief History of Living Forever by Jaroslav Kalfař is a Near-future Dystopian Fiction Story!
Are you obsessed with thoughts of living forever?
Adéla receives a terminal diagnosis in Prague that prompts a longing for the daughter she gave up forty years ago. She heads to a nativist America and locates her daughter, Tereza, in New York City.
Tereza is a high level researcher for a secret biotech company whose primary mission is finding the key to immortality. Tereza is ecstatic over connecting with her mother, and upon hearing of Adéla's health issue, makes plans to help.
That's when the craziness begins...
After mother and daughter separate for the night, Adéla mysteriously dies and her body is hastened away to a mass grave for undocumented immigrants in the swamps and what remains of Florida.
Overwhelmed by the news of her mother's death, Tereza travels to the Czech Republic to persuade her younger brother, Roman, who she's never met, to return to America and help bring their mother's remains home....
The Brief History of Living Forever has chapters in two distinct timelines: "Past" and "Near-future". "Past" chapters encompasses Adéla's recollections and highlights of her life which adds an interesting texture to both the character and the story. "Near-future" chapters surround Tereza and Roman and their endeavors to bring Adéla back to the Czech Republic. Through both timelines, Adéla narrates animatedly from the beyond. Seriously, she does and it's my favorite aspect of this story.
A Brief History of Living Forever is an off-beat, uniquely written story with a variety of characters from strangely likable to weirdly unexplainable to outrageously criminal and one character is an unbelievably ancient 109 years old. I enjoy original, creative storytelling and this author writes it well.
Jaroslav Kalfař, born in the Czechoslovakia, immigrated to the US at fifteen. I appreciate the sharing of, from his vantage point of familiarity, the old Czechoslovakia and the current Czech Republic within this story. It sparked a curiosity to do a bit of exploring about the Velvet Revolution and the Velvet Divorce, two terms and events in World History I was unfamiliar with and it's always a good day to learn something new.
There's an edginess to this author's writing that I very much enjoy and I'm surprised by how much I loved A Brief History of Living Forever but knew when I read its premise, it was a strong contender as a great fit for me. I will definitely check out his debut novel The Spaceman of Bohemia and I look forward to what this creative author comes up with next. I highly recommend!
4.5 stars!
Thank you to Little, Brown and Company for a physical ARC of this book. It has been an honor to give my honest and voluntary review.
Are you obsessed with thoughts of living forever?
Adéla receives a terminal diagnosis in Prague that prompts a longing for the daughter she gave up forty years ago. She heads to a nativist America and locates her daughter, Tereza, in New York City.
Tereza is a high level researcher for a secret biotech company whose primary mission is finding the key to immortality. Tereza is ecstatic over connecting with her mother, and upon hearing of Adéla's health issue, makes plans to help.
That's when the craziness begins...
After mother and daughter separate for the night, Adéla mysteriously dies and her body is hastened away to a mass grave for undocumented immigrants in the swamps and what remains of Florida.
Overwhelmed by the news of her mother's death, Tereza travels to the Czech Republic to persuade her younger brother, Roman, who she's never met, to return to America and help bring their mother's remains home....
The Brief History of Living Forever has chapters in two distinct timelines: "Past" and "Near-future". "Past" chapters encompasses Adéla's recollections and highlights of her life which adds an interesting texture to both the character and the story. "Near-future" chapters surround Tereza and Roman and their endeavors to bring Adéla back to the Czech Republic. Through both timelines, Adéla narrates animatedly from the beyond. Seriously, she does and it's my favorite aspect of this story.
A Brief History of Living Forever is an off-beat, uniquely written story with a variety of characters from strangely likable to weirdly unexplainable to outrageously criminal and one character is an unbelievably ancient 109 years old. I enjoy original, creative storytelling and this author writes it well.
Jaroslav Kalfař, born in the Czechoslovakia, immigrated to the US at fifteen. I appreciate the sharing of, from his vantage point of familiarity, the old Czechoslovakia and the current Czech Republic within this story. It sparked a curiosity to do a bit of exploring about the Velvet Revolution and the Velvet Divorce, two terms and events in World History I was unfamiliar with and it's always a good day to learn something new.
There's an edginess to this author's writing that I very much enjoy and I'm surprised by how much I loved A Brief History of Living Forever but knew when I read its premise, it was a strong contender as a great fit for me. I will definitely check out his debut novel The Spaceman of Bohemia and I look forward to what this creative author comes up with next. I highly recommend!
4.5 stars!
Thank you to Little, Brown and Company for a physical ARC of this book. It has been an honor to give my honest and voluntary review.
January 9, 2023
Wow, I finished this about 10 minutes ago and I just had to sit with it a bit. This book is truly remarkable, heartbreaking and beautiful all at once. It truly makes you rethink your life and truly living it, and what may come afterwards and accepting what could come afterlife. I loved how it was a near-future fiction but with throw backs to the past to really well-round the story and give a backstory on the main characters life. The near future reality is such a crazy submersion into the future, but not so far fetched it's not believable. Made me rethink alot of things and to start enjoying the life I have right now while I can. This made me feel good for a moment, then truly broke my heart. I enjoyed it thoroughly in a sad eye opening way.
I won this ARC from a Goodreads giveaway. All of the statements above are my true opinions after fully reading this book.
I won this ARC from a Goodreads giveaway. All of the statements above are my true opinions after fully reading this book.
September 26, 2024
3 stars = Good and worthwhile.
America’s no place to be. Unforgiving. No reasonable person goes there.
Novels that make you wonder and philosophically contemplate a hypothetical scenario are some of my favorites. The synopsis for this one focuses on the dystopian USA set around 2030 when an ultra-nationalistic far right party is in power and wreaking havoc on humanity, but at its core, the book mostly explores the consideration of what it means to be human.
The science-fiction future would benefit the rich and poor alike. The world without the body was more equal.
How much of our lived experience is derived from our body and physical senses versus our mind and consciousness? What biotechnical modifications cross the line, resulting in a new creation that is no longer human? These were just a couple of the questions I kept pondering while reading this one.
He truly believed that happiness was a human right, whereas any Czech could tell you that happiness was a glitch, a rare alignment of chaos, like a bird that sings beautifully before roosting on electric wires.
It is a bizarre book, filled with unusual occurrences. I was expecting a sci-fi novel written with a literary flare, but it is actually literary fiction with some sci-fi stirred in for extra flavor. The author has a lovely way with words, scattering beautiful prose in a despondent voice. The fascist landscape he paints is frightening because of how easily it could become a reality, but it feels like periphery in the novel. The dangers of trusting gigantic powerful corporations and exploring which limitations or alterations cause us to shed our humanity are the themes that are most prominent.
When Facebook prophets spoke of Muslim invaders overrunning our country, enough of my countrymen possessed the right combination of media illiteracy and bigotry to accept imaginary threats as truth.
It was the contemplation of the philosophical considerations brought up by the story that I enjoyed the most, not the plot which wasn’t gripping, nor the characters which were not engaging. This book is great for anyone that enjoys slower moving, beautifully written, unique literary fiction and has an interest in ruminating on the ramifications of living forever. I would now like to read the author’s debut novel because of his wordsmithing, insightful commentary on society, and original ideas.
I felt free to do anything I liked, no longer beholden to the monthly process of paying bills, shopping the grocery sales, doing it all over again the following week, the routine of paycheck-to-paycheck that kept the kingdom of humans running in an orderly manner and discouraged us from delusions of grandeur.
-------------------------------------------
First Sentence: On a cold morning in late November, I arrived at my physician’s office to discuss the results of my annual health exam.
Favorite Quote: Any country should appreciate its immigrants as objective observers - the immigrant views a country without the hue of nostalgia, the childhood indoctrination that establishes that our country must be good because it produced us, and we are good. But the criticism of governance, of systems, of cultural values is a necessary catalyst for progress, not a personal insult.
America’s no place to be. Unforgiving. No reasonable person goes there.
Novels that make you wonder and philosophically contemplate a hypothetical scenario are some of my favorites. The synopsis for this one focuses on the dystopian USA set around 2030 when an ultra-nationalistic far right party is in power and wreaking havoc on humanity, but at its core, the book mostly explores the consideration of what it means to be human.
The science-fiction future would benefit the rich and poor alike. The world without the body was more equal.
How much of our lived experience is derived from our body and physical senses versus our mind and consciousness? What biotechnical modifications cross the line, resulting in a new creation that is no longer human? These were just a couple of the questions I kept pondering while reading this one.
He truly believed that happiness was a human right, whereas any Czech could tell you that happiness was a glitch, a rare alignment of chaos, like a bird that sings beautifully before roosting on electric wires.
It is a bizarre book, filled with unusual occurrences. I was expecting a sci-fi novel written with a literary flare, but it is actually literary fiction with some sci-fi stirred in for extra flavor. The author has a lovely way with words, scattering beautiful prose in a despondent voice. The fascist landscape he paints is frightening because of how easily it could become a reality, but it feels like periphery in the novel. The dangers of trusting gigantic powerful corporations and exploring which limitations or alterations cause us to shed our humanity are the themes that are most prominent.
When Facebook prophets spoke of Muslim invaders overrunning our country, enough of my countrymen possessed the right combination of media illiteracy and bigotry to accept imaginary threats as truth.
It was the contemplation of the philosophical considerations brought up by the story that I enjoyed the most, not the plot which wasn’t gripping, nor the characters which were not engaging. This book is great for anyone that enjoys slower moving, beautifully written, unique literary fiction and has an interest in ruminating on the ramifications of living forever. I would now like to read the author’s debut novel because of his wordsmithing, insightful commentary on society, and original ideas.
I felt free to do anything I liked, no longer beholden to the monthly process of paying bills, shopping the grocery sales, doing it all over again the following week, the routine of paycheck-to-paycheck that kept the kingdom of humans running in an orderly manner and discouraged us from delusions of grandeur.
-------------------------------------------
First Sentence: On a cold morning in late November, I arrived at my physician’s office to discuss the results of my annual health exam.
Favorite Quote: Any country should appreciate its immigrants as objective observers - the immigrant views a country without the hue of nostalgia, the childhood indoctrination that establishes that our country must be good because it produced us, and we are good. But the criticism of governance, of systems, of cultural values is a necessary catalyst for progress, not a personal insult.
March 24, 2023
Some of the dystopian elements in this book sound very, very real, with the main element being the US closing its borders for all people except a few tourists. And of course, throwing out many people who thought to find safety from hunger and war. Just follow the news… It’s frightening.
The search for ‘eternal’ life is not new, and this subject can be found in many Science Fiction novels but here it is part of the story of Adéle, Tereza and Roman. The history of the Czech Republic is complicated but the author uses this as a solid background for Adéle, so we get to know where she came from and how growing up in her country shaped her life and her thoughts.
So, all these elements, getting together in this wonderful, insightful and beautifully written book. It’s impossible (well, it is to me) to write a review that conveys exactly what I felt while reading this. I just loved it!
Thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for this review copy.
The search for ‘eternal’ life is not new, and this subject can be found in many Science Fiction novels but here it is part of the story of Adéle, Tereza and Roman. The history of the Czech Republic is complicated but the author uses this as a solid background for Adéle, so we get to know where she came from and how growing up in her country shaped her life and her thoughts.
So, all these elements, getting together in this wonderful, insightful and beautifully written book. It’s impossible (well, it is to me) to write a review that conveys exactly what I felt while reading this. I just loved it!
Thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for this review copy.
March 30, 2023
Set in a dystopian future, where ultra-nationalism has captured the world, we meet Adela, a woman who has just being told that she is going to die and has never met her daughter. The story documents her first meeting with her daughter and what happens in the aftermath of her death.
When I first read the premise of the book I had thought it would be 100% for me. Indeed, elements of it were done very well, the authors take on the dystopian future is very believable.
However, the story fell down for me in a number of ways. I struggled with how the author wrote both Adela and Tereza, women don't scoop sweat from their armpits, and elements of the eroticism were very much written through a male gaze. While I appreciate the link between telomerases and salamanders etc, as someone who is actually a scientist it felt like buzzwords were been thrown in for the sake of it, such as references to microscopic nanobots. I had expected this to perhaps be a book that spoke back to power but it never reached that point. I also found the pendulum swinging between past and present jarring, and at times quite forced. (Adela literally decides to float off into the past whenever she wishes and we are told as much).
Overall for me it was a very mixed read, parts were done very well but large swathes of it irritated me and as I said I felt that a lot of the time the portrayal of the characters was very stereo-typical and written for the male gaze.
When I first read the premise of the book I had thought it would be 100% for me. Indeed, elements of it were done very well, the authors take on the dystopian future is very believable.
However, the story fell down for me in a number of ways. I struggled with how the author wrote both Adela and Tereza, women don't scoop sweat from their armpits, and elements of the eroticism were very much written through a male gaze. While I appreciate the link between telomerases and salamanders etc, as someone who is actually a scientist it felt like buzzwords were been thrown in for the sake of it, such as references to microscopic nanobots. I had expected this to perhaps be a book that spoke back to power but it never reached that point. I also found the pendulum swinging between past and present jarring, and at times quite forced. (Adela literally decides to float off into the past whenever she wishes and we are told as much).
Overall for me it was a very mixed read, parts were done very well but large swathes of it irritated me and as I said I felt that a lot of the time the portrayal of the characters was very stereo-typical and written for the male gaze.
Read
February 25, 2023I don't think this story is bad, it just wasn't for me. I didn't connect with Adéla at all, and while I had some interest in the near future dystopia it didn't grip me either. Because I wasn't invested in Adéla I really didn't love the chapters set in the past about her life.
The writing was good, this just isn't the sort of story I usually read and enjoy. I thought maybe the slight sci-fi/dystopia elements might hook me, but it just wasn't enough.
Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a copy of the arc.
The writing was good, this just isn't the sort of story I usually read and enjoy. I thought maybe the slight sci-fi/dystopia elements might hook me, but it just wasn't enough.
Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for a copy of the arc.
March 28, 2023
I described the author’s first novel, Spaceman of Bohemia, as part space adventure, part chronicle of recent Czech history. It also featured an encounter with a strange companion prompting the protagonist to revisit the events of his early life. Apart from the space adventure bit, you can tick off all the rest with this latest book – a magical talking carp anyone? – but add a large helping of dystopia.
In the author’s frighteningly plausible scenario, America in 2030 is a country where surveillence of citizens is omnipresent and the boundary between the human brain and AI technology is increasingly thin. Many have adopted an implant that connects the Internet directly into their brain. Commerce is dominated by biotech giants such as the VITA corporation, an entity run by two individuals called Steve and Mark. (Random choice of first names? I don’t think so… ) They are investing billions into research on increasing human longevity. Adela’s daughter, Tereza, is one of their employees although her research has a much more altruistic motivation. And America is now governed by the Reclamation Party, a far right, ultra-nationalistic government whose first piece of legislation closed the country’s borders to immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers, and requires those few visitors who do make it to their shores to be electronically tagged and tracked. Unlikely, surely? Climate change has also caused rising sea levels, rendering parts of America uninhabitable.
After only one day with her long-lost daughter, who was adopted by a Danish family as a newborn, Adela dies but lives on in a virtual state able to witness the attempts of her daughter to retrieve her body which has mysteriously disappeared, possibly for ominous reasons. Travelling back to Czechia, Tereza meets her 109-year-old grandmother, the wonderful Babi, and her brother, Roman. He has become infected with the same nationalistic attitudes as those in America.
Between observing their efforts and browsing through the entries in Tereza’s online journal via her implanted device, Adela makes virtual trips back in time to ‘the adventures of her youth’. These include her experiences as a dissident in 1980s Czechoslovakia, as an undocumented immigrant to America and as the wife of a budding filmmaker. We witness their ill-fated attempt to make a film based on the science fiction novel, War of the Newts by Czech author, Karel Čapek, which features an interspecies relationship. (If Wikipedia is to be believed, the author and his novel actually exist.) The latter section felt overlong to me although it did prompt me to search for information about salamanders.
I admired Adela’s resilience. As she herself reflects, ‘I had lived well, loved well, betrayed well, failed well. In all my triumphs and in all my faults, no one – not a cosmic force, not a god, not my children saving my remnants – could ever accuse me of letting life pass me by, of capitulating, of giving in once I’d been broken’. However I did find her willingness to jettison relationships questionably selfish. ‘In each person’s life, there came a time to cut losses and run’.
A wry humour runs throughout the book that often satirises potential technological developments. I chuckled (and so, I suspect, did the author) at the idea of a publishing house promising ‘to revolutionise the field of literature’ by creating custom books for each reader based on a detailed questionnaire which would enable them to identify a reader’s preferences, such as favourite genres, views about politics and identity, their capacity for empathy, favourite foods and music, etc.
A Brief History of Living Forever is endlessly inventive, occasionally bizarre but never less than entertaining. The author’s vision of a dystopian world dominated by extreme nationalism is scary not least because it seems like it could be a possibility.
In the author’s frighteningly plausible scenario, America in 2030 is a country where surveillence of citizens is omnipresent and the boundary between the human brain and AI technology is increasingly thin. Many have adopted an implant that connects the Internet directly into their brain. Commerce is dominated by biotech giants such as the VITA corporation, an entity run by two individuals called Steve and Mark. (Random choice of first names? I don’t think so… ) They are investing billions into research on increasing human longevity. Adela’s daughter, Tereza, is one of their employees although her research has a much more altruistic motivation. And America is now governed by the Reclamation Party, a far right, ultra-nationalistic government whose first piece of legislation closed the country’s borders to immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers, and requires those few visitors who do make it to their shores to be electronically tagged and tracked. Unlikely, surely? Climate change has also caused rising sea levels, rendering parts of America uninhabitable.
After only one day with her long-lost daughter, who was adopted by a Danish family as a newborn, Adela dies but lives on in a virtual state able to witness the attempts of her daughter to retrieve her body which has mysteriously disappeared, possibly for ominous reasons. Travelling back to Czechia, Tereza meets her 109-year-old grandmother, the wonderful Babi, and her brother, Roman. He has become infected with the same nationalistic attitudes as those in America.
Between observing their efforts and browsing through the entries in Tereza’s online journal via her implanted device, Adela makes virtual trips back in time to ‘the adventures of her youth’. These include her experiences as a dissident in 1980s Czechoslovakia, as an undocumented immigrant to America and as the wife of a budding filmmaker. We witness their ill-fated attempt to make a film based on the science fiction novel, War of the Newts by Czech author, Karel Čapek, which features an interspecies relationship. (If Wikipedia is to be believed, the author and his novel actually exist.) The latter section felt overlong to me although it did prompt me to search for information about salamanders.
I admired Adela’s resilience. As she herself reflects, ‘I had lived well, loved well, betrayed well, failed well. In all my triumphs and in all my faults, no one – not a cosmic force, not a god, not my children saving my remnants – could ever accuse me of letting life pass me by, of capitulating, of giving in once I’d been broken’. However I did find her willingness to jettison relationships questionably selfish. ‘In each person’s life, there came a time to cut losses and run’.
A wry humour runs throughout the book that often satirises potential technological developments. I chuckled (and so, I suspect, did the author) at the idea of a publishing house promising ‘to revolutionise the field of literature’ by creating custom books for each reader based on a detailed questionnaire which would enable them to identify a reader’s preferences, such as favourite genres, views about politics and identity, their capacity for empathy, favourite foods and music, etc.
A Brief History of Living Forever is endlessly inventive, occasionally bizarre but never less than entertaining. The author’s vision of a dystopian world dominated by extreme nationalism is scary not least because it seems like it could be a possibility.
September 13, 2023
“After the harrowing lifetime of being human, weren’t we all entitled to a break?” Pg 300.
First, I want to say that Jaroslav Kalfar is a beautiful writer. I kept getting lost in his word smithing. He really knows how to write in a way that brings depth and enrichment to the words on the page. That pushed me into giving this book 4 stars.
This is Adela’s story. From the Czech Republic she finds out she is terminally I’ll. She has a son and mother at home but gave a daughter up for adoption who is living in NYC. She has to see her before she dies. The story takes off from there when she meets her daughter. Adela dies while there and then narrates the story as a person who has passed on, or is she? The adventure begins.
The story is set in 2029-2030. The world has changed. The United States has changed. Society is controlled. The author pins it on a party that is formed after the Republican Party disbands and a president is elected from a politician in Florida. I can see this being a trigger for conservatives as he makes them the bad guys. I personally think the elites from all political parties want to control us, so I didn’t focus too much on one side or the other. However, it is political throughout the novel. The main focal point for me was family relationships and if we could live forever with our essence uploaded in the cloud would we want to live forever?
First, I want to say that Jaroslav Kalfar is a beautiful writer. I kept getting lost in his word smithing. He really knows how to write in a way that brings depth and enrichment to the words on the page. That pushed me into giving this book 4 stars.
This is Adela’s story. From the Czech Republic she finds out she is terminally I’ll. She has a son and mother at home but gave a daughter up for adoption who is living in NYC. She has to see her before she dies. The story takes off from there when she meets her daughter. Adela dies while there and then narrates the story as a person who has passed on, or is she? The adventure begins.
The story is set in 2029-2030. The world has changed. The United States has changed. Society is controlled. The author pins it on a party that is formed after the Republican Party disbands and a president is elected from a politician in Florida. I can see this being a trigger for conservatives as he makes them the bad guys. I personally think the elites from all political parties want to control us, so I didn’t focus too much on one side or the other. However, it is political throughout the novel. The main focal point for me was family relationships and if we could live forever with our essence uploaded in the cloud would we want to live forever?
October 19, 2022
Thanks to Little, Brown and Company and Netgalley for the e-ARC in exchange for an honest review!
Anyway, this book was stunning. I hate to use the term "meditation" when talking about books, since it feels like such a cliche at this point, but it really was that in terms of how it looked at grief and memory and what it means to /live/ and connect with others.
The style of writing has a sparse lushness to it, and the shift between time periods feels like shifting in a dream. I was intending to give it four stars at first, but the ending pushed me to five: the book kept true to it's intimate and very human bleakness in it, and never wavered, even if a different ending might have been more palatable. I also adore near-future fiction (blame my dad for making me read a lot of Cory Doctorow as a kid) and this captured that feeling of a future that is so close and so awful and so real.
Anyway, had a GREAT time with this, love a good strange sci-fi book.
Anyway, this book was stunning. I hate to use the term "meditation" when talking about books, since it feels like such a cliche at this point, but it really was that in terms of how it looked at grief and memory and what it means to /live/ and connect with others.
The style of writing has a sparse lushness to it, and the shift between time periods feels like shifting in a dream. I was intending to give it four stars at first, but the ending pushed me to five: the book kept true to it's intimate and very human bleakness in it, and never wavered, even if a different ending might have been more palatable. I also adore near-future fiction (blame my dad for making me read a lot of Cory Doctorow as a kid) and this captured that feeling of a future that is so close and so awful and so real.
Anyway, had a GREAT time with this, love a good strange sci-fi book.
December 3, 2022
What would you do if you learned you only had a year left to live? Adela unfortunately learns this is what will happen to her and she makes the decision to go to the USA to find the daughter she gave up for adoption. What follows is an unexpected journey where Adela is able to learn about her daughter from her viewpoint in the afterlife. While her daughter, Tereza, has a journey that helps her to connect with a family she never knew.
This book is a complicated tale of a mixture between love and family along with futuristic technology aiming to extend that family bond. This sounded like it would be right up my alley and I was excited to read it. Also there are so many positive reviews. Unfortunately it wasn’t for me. I struggled to get into the story. I wonder if it was in audiobook form if I would like it better but I’m not sure. Still I always believe that a book is worth trying and hope others give it a try.
Many thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for the opportunity to review this arc.
This book is a complicated tale of a mixture between love and family along with futuristic technology aiming to extend that family bond. This sounded like it would be right up my alley and I was excited to read it. Also there are so many positive reviews. Unfortunately it wasn’t for me. I struggled to get into the story. I wonder if it was in audiobook form if I would like it better but I’m not sure. Still I always believe that a book is worth trying and hope others give it a try.
Many thanks to NetGalley and Little, Brown and Company for the opportunity to review this arc.
January 5, 2024
Interesting questions about living forever - but it's a two timeline POV and I found 1/2 of the timeline uninteresting. I wish I'd loved this like others did, but I did not connect with the MC. I think I figured out the reasoning for the 2nd timeline part of the book but I found it distracting. I wanted to stay in the world of 2030 because I found it more ominous and interesting.
I also wonder how interesting this book will be after 2024, where the timeline first begins (one of them anyway).
I also wonder how interesting this book will be after 2024, where the timeline first begins (one of them anyway).
July 21, 2023
This sci-fi/spec-fic novel is embedded in a family drama. It probably qualifies for the literary genre more than the sci-fi, for the science is very thin here. That mix recalls nominally sci-fi works by Ishiguro (Klara’s Heart, Never Let Me Go).
I was an enthusiastic fan of Kalfar’s debut, Spaceman of Bohemia. This novel tries to recapture that magic, and does sidle up to it, but Living Forever also has the feel of a book produced under pressure to perform. What made Spaceman terrific was the imaginative space alien, a truly unique character, intersecting the astronaut’s lonely musings about his estranged wife in the background of a new Czech Republic trying to find its capitalistic post-communist feet.
I thought Spaceman was a master work, but now I wonder if it was beginner’s luck. Kalfar seems not to understand what made Spaceman great. Here, he doubles-down on Czech culture, which was never the main point in Spaceman. The great purple “alien” is now the disembodied consciousness of Adela, an old woman whose mind has been uploaded into the digital cloud (or some such handwaving). The emotional “yearning” that drives the characters (to use a favorite descriptor of Orson Card's), is merely the longing of Adela to reassure her children that she is alright in “the other world,” or wherever she is. But she can only observe (and narrate) but not communicate. The profound perplexity of Spaceman’s solitary astronaut (“What happened to my world?”) is weak or missing.
A subtheme of Living Forever, as tedious as it is irrelevant to the main story, concerns Adela’s memories of 40 years earlier when, as a young woman, she made an independent film with her boyfriend. The film was an adaptation of Czech author Karel Capek’s 1936 novel, War of the Newts, a story about giant, intelligent salamanders taking over the world. Capek is probably best remembered for his first novel, Rossum’s Universal Robots, which coined the term “robot.” In that one, intelligent robot workers try to take over a factory and all of society. Truthfully, neither one of them holds up well today, but Capek was a prescient writer and is a Czech cultural hero.
The astute reader can see Kalfar’s attempt to connect the giant newt takeover to today’s capitalists who have taken over and remade the Czech Republic, but it’s not a theme well-drawn, and anyway, that comparison is not a tremendously clever one.
Kalfar’s writing is more than competent, but not compelling. The narrative is severely chopped up between Adela’s current (2030) disembodied predicament and her 1980s memories. The disjunction destroys story momentum in both worlds. More than 75% of the novel is narrative exposition. There’s very little dialog and very few dramatic scenes. It’s almost all telling, no showing, a style more suited to Capek’s 1936 than today’s visually-saturated audience, with the result that emotional tension in the story is observed at a long arm’s distance.
I’m sorry to say I was disappointed by this novel, but I haven’t lost faith in Kalfar. Spaceman was so stunningly good that I have to believe he’ll be back with another winner, eventually.
Kalfar, Jaroslav (2023). A Brief History of Living Forever. London: Hodder & Stroughton, 302 pp.
I was an enthusiastic fan of Kalfar’s debut, Spaceman of Bohemia. This novel tries to recapture that magic, and does sidle up to it, but Living Forever also has the feel of a book produced under pressure to perform. What made Spaceman terrific was the imaginative space alien, a truly unique character, intersecting the astronaut’s lonely musings about his estranged wife in the background of a new Czech Republic trying to find its capitalistic post-communist feet.
I thought Spaceman was a master work, but now I wonder if it was beginner’s luck. Kalfar seems not to understand what made Spaceman great. Here, he doubles-down on Czech culture, which was never the main point in Spaceman. The great purple “alien” is now the disembodied consciousness of Adela, an old woman whose mind has been uploaded into the digital cloud (or some such handwaving). The emotional “yearning” that drives the characters (to use a favorite descriptor of Orson Card's), is merely the longing of Adela to reassure her children that she is alright in “the other world,” or wherever she is. But she can only observe (and narrate) but not communicate. The profound perplexity of Spaceman’s solitary astronaut (“What happened to my world?”) is weak or missing.
A subtheme of Living Forever, as tedious as it is irrelevant to the main story, concerns Adela’s memories of 40 years earlier when, as a young woman, she made an independent film with her boyfriend. The film was an adaptation of Czech author Karel Capek’s 1936 novel, War of the Newts, a story about giant, intelligent salamanders taking over the world. Capek is probably best remembered for his first novel, Rossum’s Universal Robots, which coined the term “robot.” In that one, intelligent robot workers try to take over a factory and all of society. Truthfully, neither one of them holds up well today, but Capek was a prescient writer and is a Czech cultural hero.
The astute reader can see Kalfar’s attempt to connect the giant newt takeover to today’s capitalists who have taken over and remade the Czech Republic, but it’s not a theme well-drawn, and anyway, that comparison is not a tremendously clever one.
Kalfar’s writing is more than competent, but not compelling. The narrative is severely chopped up between Adela’s current (2030) disembodied predicament and her 1980s memories. The disjunction destroys story momentum in both worlds. More than 75% of the novel is narrative exposition. There’s very little dialog and very few dramatic scenes. It’s almost all telling, no showing, a style more suited to Capek’s 1936 than today’s visually-saturated audience, with the result that emotional tension in the story is observed at a long arm’s distance.
I’m sorry to say I was disappointed by this novel, but I haven’t lost faith in Kalfar. Spaceman was so stunningly good that I have to believe he’ll be back with another winner, eventually.
Kalfar, Jaroslav (2023). A Brief History of Living Forever. London: Hodder & Stroughton, 302 pp.
March 27, 2023
"My name is Adéla Slavíková. Join me, on this usual path to work, during the final winter of my mortal toil!"
Is that not a perfect intro? We meet, as you can see, Adéla, at the start of the story. She's an older lady, living with her mom and son in the Czech Republic, in 2029. We meet her on one of the worst days of her life- she has just been given about a year left to live with a terminal illness. She decides she is going to go see the daughter she gave up for adoption many moons ago. Her daughter happens to live in the US (unsurprisingly, we are a hot mess and have destroyed the country), and it isn't easy to travel there. But she is determined to see Tereza before she dies.
Tereza has made quite a name for herself in the US, and one of her biggest projects is finding the key to immortality. Her company is willing to do just about anything to crack the code, and she hopes to be able to save her mom. But alas, Adéla dies just as they meet. But something... interesting has happened, and Adéla still has some sort of consciousness remaining. We switch between past and present, as Adéla shares details of her life leading up to finding Tereza, and what is happening with Tereza and her company now.
I absolutely loved the familial aspect of this story. Not only is Adéla worrying about her kids, she is worrying about how her aging mother (she's 109, how cool is that?) is coping. And, through the past snippets, we see how her relationship with her parents evolved over time. There are a ton of beautiful and heartwrenching moments throughout the story, and that has to be my favorite aspect. There are also a lot of great, thought provoking questions of morality and mortality. What makes us us? What makes us "alive"? And should we really ever play god?
There were some moments were I thought perhaps we had a bit too much detail about Adéla's past, especially the movie she made with her ex, that dragged for me a bit. But overall, I loved taking this beautiful, yet often bleak, journey with Adéla and her family.
Bottom Line: This book is a very heartfelt journey, but it also asks some really thought provoking and important questions.
You can find the full review and all the fancy and/or randomness that accompanies it at It Starts at Midnight
January 1, 2023
Parts of this book were 2 stars, parts 4 stars.
I was drawn to the dystopian elements in this book on how they would reach immortality.
The book's narrator Adéla jumps from her teen years to the early years of becoming a mother, to the "now" in the near future. She has died, but her consciousness is still there and follows her daughter and her family.
Within the flashbacks, there is a whole other story which she and her partner turn into a film, they hope will become a cult classic. The flashbacks were too drawn out for me.
The "now" parts were way more interesting to me, and lacked the depth the flashback scenes had.
Overall the vibe I got from this book was very melancholy, so if you are in the mood for that this book is for you.
There were very interesting political observations in this book.
Overall it was a bit of a confusing read.
I was drawn to the dystopian elements in this book on how they would reach immortality.
The book's narrator Adéla jumps from her teen years to the early years of becoming a mother, to the "now" in the near future. She has died, but her consciousness is still there and follows her daughter and her family.
Within the flashbacks, there is a whole other story which she and her partner turn into a film, they hope will become a cult classic. The flashbacks were too drawn out for me.
The "now" parts were way more interesting to me, and lacked the depth the flashback scenes had.
Overall the vibe I got from this book was very melancholy, so if you are in the mood for that this book is for you.
There were very interesting political observations in this book.
Overall it was a bit of a confusing read.
November 24, 2022
Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for the ARC copy!
The synopsis of this book immediately sounded right up my alley. I would recommend reading this if you like dual timelines of past Vs future, dystopian reads, and some medical drama. Overall the writing was great in this but I found myself wanting more from the plot and characters. 3.5 stars rounded to 4
The synopsis of this book immediately sounded right up my alley. I would recommend reading this if you like dual timelines of past Vs future, dystopian reads, and some medical drama. Overall the writing was great in this but I found myself wanting more from the plot and characters. 3.5 stars rounded to 4
August 23, 2023
A very interesting concept. However, I found the ending to be extremely lackluster and a massive letdown.
February 23, 2024
Three-and-a-Half Stars, but rounded up because of Kalfař's big, bold intentions.
Much like in his first novel, Kalfař has again included a science fiction story but that's not what this novel IS, not what it is really about. The past is never actually gone, and the future will not exist without its freighted history; Kalfař's characters either grapple with that or embrace it, and a Czech heritage leans those strongly towards the latter. Even the tale itself carries a load of literature past.
I was delighted that Karel Čapek's brilliant 1936 novel War With the Newts (Válka s mloky) figures so actively through the middle acts; that book is not merely extraordinary but perhaps quite timely as well, and a more wry, Czech piece would be hard to find. Further, as ABHoLF plays out, it exhibits strong debts to P.K. Dick's Ubik and Tad Williams' "Otherland" novels in the practical and ethical dilemmas associated with stored consciousnesses. This is a book about people, choices, values, and costs, after all.
Spinning the course of current events into such grim, near-future dystopic societies may have been too heavy-handed a background, though. The novel leans way too much at times into a schizophrenic crisis of what it's trying to tell you, and that was a weakness in the storytelling. The jumping around of perspectives, as well, softened the overall effect, making this novel somewhat less successful than the author's first [Spaceman of Bohemia]. Still, there's enough thought, effort, and individuality on display to make this a better-than-average novel, whether one considers it SFF or not.
Much like in his first novel, Kalfař has again included a science fiction story but that's not what this novel IS, not what it is really about. The past is never actually gone, and the future will not exist without its freighted history; Kalfař's characters either grapple with that or embrace it, and a Czech heritage leans those strongly towards the latter. Even the tale itself carries a load of literature past.
I was delighted that Karel Čapek's brilliant 1936 novel War With the Newts (Válka s mloky) figures so actively through the middle acts; that book is not merely extraordinary but perhaps quite timely as well, and a more wry, Czech piece would be hard to find. Further, as ABHoLF plays out, it exhibits strong debts to P.K. Dick's Ubik and Tad Williams' "Otherland" novels in the practical and ethical dilemmas associated with stored consciousnesses. This is a book about people, choices, values, and costs, after all.
Spinning the course of current events into such grim, near-future dystopic societies may have been too heavy-handed a background, though. The novel leans way too much at times into a schizophrenic crisis of what it's trying to tell you, and that was a weakness in the storytelling. The jumping around of perspectives, as well, softened the overall effect, making this novel somewhat less successful than the author's first [Spaceman of Bohemia]. Still, there's enough thought, effort, and individuality on display to make this a better-than-average novel, whether one considers it SFF or not.
June 4, 2023
Picked this one up from Aardvark. It wasn’t what I was expecting given the “sci-fi” label, however the elements of that were intriguing and not too far from possibility.
The story is told from a futuristic 2030 timeline (interesting, realistic date there) and the other parts flashed back to the past. I enjoyed the future parts more than the past. I found the past chapters to drag and I didn’t connect with the main character or really any of the characters, so things dragged quite a bit, if I’m honest.
Also, the writing is good but tends to get preachy and is quite political. There was what felt like a lot of info dropping and telling vs. showing. The ending to this is bleak, but alas, not that far fetched for where we’re headed.
The story is told from a futuristic 2030 timeline (interesting, realistic date there) and the other parts flashed back to the past. I enjoyed the future parts more than the past. I found the past chapters to drag and I didn’t connect with the main character or really any of the characters, so things dragged quite a bit, if I’m honest.
Also, the writing is good but tends to get preachy and is quite political. There was what felt like a lot of info dropping and telling vs. showing. The ending to this is bleak, but alas, not that far fetched for where we’re headed.
February 2, 2025
I am I truly unsure how I feel about this book. I know it’s genre is science fiction but with all the political unrest happening in the US this book does not feel like science fiction. The part where the US closes it’s borders and is very hostile towards other people which in turn other countries start to behave the same way and close the borders where does this leave us as humanity if we are unwilling to help others who are different in need. This part really does not feel like science fiction to me feels like it could very well happen.
March 31, 2025
This book was so so interesting to me - it made me realise maybe I do enjoy reading about politics. I really enjoyed the flashbacks to the 1980s, and the writing throughout was so beautiful. Overall this was a fascinating book which makes a powerful statement, I just wish the ending was more satisfying as I still had some questions. Although maybe that’s the purpose of it - making it all the more meaningful.
Read
July 28, 2024A really cool modern sci-fi book by a Czech author. Manages to touch on brain uploading, samizdat collectives, Karel Capek, and American/European blood-and-soil fascism, in a way I thought held together really well! With a nice slug of Eastern European pessimism and appreciation of the absurd.
June 17, 2023
This is a very, very good book. You should read it.
July 7, 2023
Ugh. This took me forever and I hated it. Too weird and too ridiculous.
April 3, 2023
Video review
https://youtu.be/6xLFCrq7YZk
https://youtu.be/6xLFCrq7YZk
November 16, 2023
4.5 rounded up
this book weaves together ideas of immortality with the volatility of the present day political situation. extremely intriguing to consider our current outlook and what could be the future
this book weaves together ideas of immortality with the volatility of the present day political situation. extremely intriguing to consider our current outlook and what could be the future
May 10, 2023
“Perhaps utopia isn’t a kind of shared future but rather individuals submerged within their own versions of the past, confined to the moments they felt safe, loved, full of expectation.” (Pg.128)
A Brief History of Living Forever tempted me to find out what is behind the paradoxical title. A lot of current and futuristic themes and preoccupations as it turns out, perhaps too many in a space of one book. The narrative was pulled in multiple directions and across real and imagined past decades while managing to remain focused on the narrative’s real time set in 2030 and the main theme of human immortality: what it would mean and how it would feel for us as individuals versus what it would represent for society. Another theme running alongside the possibility of longevity is the one of possibility as such, the possibility of extending our lives, physical or spiritual, not as we have been, but as our re-invented selves, better and wiser from the experience. “What we’ve done cannot be undone. This is true not because of some biblical sense of divine injustice, but because of the nature of human memory. We are our own history, we store our past actions within our bodies whether we like it or not.” There lies it seems the conclusion if not the answer to the immortality question as we draw close to the ending of the book ( or life itself): “Although they called me the first immortal, I was a mere placebo for their greatest fear. Death would never break their hearts again…The first to face the curse of true eternity. What humans had sought since the dawn of our species..I would’ve done anything to give it away.”
A Brief History of Living Forever tempted me to find out what is behind the paradoxical title. A lot of current and futuristic themes and preoccupations as it turns out, perhaps too many in a space of one book. The narrative was pulled in multiple directions and across real and imagined past decades while managing to remain focused on the narrative’s real time set in 2030 and the main theme of human immortality: what it would mean and how it would feel for us as individuals versus what it would represent for society. Another theme running alongside the possibility of longevity is the one of possibility as such, the possibility of extending our lives, physical or spiritual, not as we have been, but as our re-invented selves, better and wiser from the experience. “What we’ve done cannot be undone. This is true not because of some biblical sense of divine injustice, but because of the nature of human memory. We are our own history, we store our past actions within our bodies whether we like it or not.” There lies it seems the conclusion if not the answer to the immortality question as we draw close to the ending of the book ( or life itself): “Although they called me the first immortal, I was a mere placebo for their greatest fear. Death would never break their hearts again…The first to face the curse of true eternity. What humans had sought since the dawn of our species..I would’ve done anything to give it away.”
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 14, 2023
This book was not what I was expecting. Adela is diagnosed with terminal cancer and decides to try to get to the US to meet her long-lost daughter, Thereza, who had been put up for adoption as an infant. Thereza works for a corporation that is working on eternal living and they have just made a huge break through. However, before it can be used on Adela she dies and gets moved to a mass grave in Florida with a bunch of other undocumented immigrants and then the story switches over to a journey to retrieve Adela’s body.
I think this book tried to tackle a lot and I really enjoyed certain elements of it, others not so much. I found the near-future visions of the world very interesting and scary in how realistic they were. Also, all of the different scientific group’s visions of forever living was intriguing. The character development was not the best though and I didn’t like the time jumps.
I think this book tried to tackle a lot and I really enjoyed certain elements of it, others not so much. I found the near-future visions of the world very interesting and scary in how realistic they were. Also, all of the different scientific group’s visions of forever living was intriguing. The character development was not the best though and I didn’t like the time jumps.
Read
February 29, 2024Fluctuated between being engaging and a little bit boring. Missed the parts that were "funny." Are any books that fall under the dystopian genre every really happy and uplifting?
July 15, 2023
The sci-fi story is told from the perspective of Adela, who dies not too far into the novel. Her narration continues into the afterlife and bounces between observing her children, and reminiscing about her early adulthood. The author has a lot to say about the threat of nationalism, and in my opinion he juuuust skirts the line between pointed and preachy (he ain't wrong though). He more subtly approaches the subject of the human condition. I especially liked the lack of redemption for certain characters. Some might call it pessimism; to me it feels real.
I was really moved by the story-winthin-a-story, the film Adela makes with Michael. It works as an allegory for the issues Kaltar wants to confront, but doesn''t hit you over the head with it.
My only criticism is the transition between chapters felt repetitive: Adela usually announces "oop time to go" when she returns to the past/present, which I didn't feel was necessary.
Overall, I quickly became invested in the story and that feeling only increased. Plot-wise, it surprised me too, up until the very end.
Thank you for the ARC!
I was really moved by the story-winthin-a-story, the film Adela makes with Michael. It works as an allegory for the issues Kaltar wants to confront, but doesn''t hit you over the head with it.
My only criticism is the transition between chapters felt repetitive: Adela usually announces "oop time to go" when she returns to the past/present, which I didn't feel was necessary.
Overall, I quickly became invested in the story and that feeling only increased. Plot-wise, it surprised me too, up until the very end.
Thank you for the ARC!
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