Letters from Prague

by Sue Gee

good condition

302 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Sue Gee was born in India, where her father was an Army officer. She had a her elder brother, Robert, now a retired radiographer living in Spain. She grew up on a Devon farm, and in a village in Leicestershire, before instaled in Surrey in 1960. She lived in north London for 27 years with the journalist Marek Mayer, they had a son, Jamie. She married Mayer in November 2003, less of two years before his death on 23th July 2005. Now, she lived in the town of Hay-on-Wye in the Welsh borders.

Published since 1980, her novel Letters From Prague, was serialised on BBC Radio 4's Woman's Hour and Her play, Ancient and Modern, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 2004, with Juliet Stevenson in the lead role. Her novel The Hours of the Night which received wide critical acclaim and was the controversial winner of the 1997 Romantic Novel of the Year Award, an award she won again in 2004 by her novel Thin Air.

She was Programme Leader for the MA Writing programme at Middlesex University from 2000 to 2008. She is currently reading for a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing at the University of East Anglia. She has been awarded a Royal Literary Fund Fellowship.

Reviews

[Zoe · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boring and bad story. Did not enjoy. Didn’t even end properly.

[Sharon Albanese · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm not really sure what this book was trying to be. Love story? Hmmm. Mystery? Not quite. Environmental thriller? No. It had bits and pieces of each of these, without being any of them. It also had the major drawback of one of the main characters being intensely unlikeable and not very convincing. I liked "Reading In Bed" but this one left me cold.

[Philipa Coughlan · Rating 5 out of 5]

New author to me. So glad to find her. This is a delight. Good literary style which brings a simple love story right into the heart of political upheaval across Eastern Europe after Russian tanks roll into Czechoslovakia in 1968. Harriet and her daughter Marsha learn more than just about their own mother/daughter relationship as they travel by train 20 years since Harriet's lover Karel left London only sending a few letters since his disappearance.
Historical interest that melts into a revelation about Harriet's family life. The mysterious Christopher Pritchard who keeps following them? How will it all end?
Excellent read

[Twiter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Environmentally friendly mother and her spoilt daughter traveling to Prague through Europe in search of the mother's long-lost love, and meditate about Karl Marx and Rosa Luxemburg. This book didn't age well.

[Beverly Schott · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a much better read than expected in following the protagonist on her life-affirming journey back in time. The past is not the present or future, but it can lead us to redefine ourselves in ways we did not expect. Letters from Prague is worth reading.

[Kang-Chun Cheng · Rating 4 out of 5]

this novel really picked it up halfway through

[Lizzy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed Letters from Prague. It details a trip and a single mother makes with her daughter to find her first love from Czechoslovakia (not her daughters father). On the way they stay with family in Brussels, and then travel on to Berlin and finish the trip in Prague.

I like the historical and travel element of the book mixed in with the story line. I particularly enjoyed the descriptions of Prague after having previously spent a holiday there.

I enjoyed the grittiness of this book as well as the realistic characters and honest emotions they displayed.

At times I found it slightly bogged down with detail, perhaps as it was my first read of this book and I wanted to know what happens, I might not find this reading this book again in the future.

[Cath Van · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was only the second time around I really started to appreciate Sue Gee's Letters from Prague. I guess the first time I was too impatient to be taken to the places and their writers she visits in the story: Brussels, Berlin and Prague and their literary, historical, political and cultural context.

[Elsa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read the paperback about 12 years ago and was deeply moved by the it. This time around the I really found the brattish behavior of the child, Marsha, extremely irritating. (Perhaps because of the advance in age!) Furthermore the kindle edition abounds with spelling and punctuation errors.