Návrat poručíka Borůvky

Lieutenant Boruvka #4

by Josef Škvorecký

Boruvka is working as a parking-lot attendant in downtown Toronto, after a spectacular escape from a Czech prison which provoked an international scandal, when a young woman is murdered, perhaps in a spy coverup. Boruvka lends his years of experience and hard-won pessimism to the neophyte Canadians on the case (including his daughter, who works for a feminist detective agency).

By having this story--his most riveting and funniest yet--narrated by the murdered woman's brother, an amiable WASP, Josef Skvorecky sets the Old World against the New, and pokes fun at the absurdities on both sides of our cultural divide. In the end, as an old war crime is avenged, the narrator discovers the source of Lieutenant Boruvka's mournful demeanour.

Genres: Crime, Fiction, Humor

139 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Josef Škvorecký, CM was a Czech writer and publisher who spent much of his life in Canada. Škvorecký was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 1980. He and his wife were long-time supporters of Czech dissident writers before the fall of communism in that country. By turns humorous, wise, eloquent and humanistic, Škvorecký's fiction deals with several themes: the horrors of totalitarianism and repression, the expatriate experience, and the miracle of jazz.

Reviews

[Jan-Maat]

Josef Škvorecký's lieutenant Boruvka was a police officer in Communist Czechoslovakia who featured in several collections of short stories, Škvorecký brings him back here, not in stories but as a character in a short novel, also the melancholic Boruvka doesn't emerge in the story immediately, he's introduced later on by his daughter, his return is delayed.

The story is set in Canada were Boruvka and family have emigrated to (as had Škvorecký himself), unlike the author the character is getting by in the world as a car park attendant. One of the nice sidelines of the book is the picture of the Czech émigré community there divided into those who left after 1968, those who left after WWII and those who think that the Czech lands went to hell in a hand-basket with the fall of the Hapsburgs. It goes without saying that the three groups are antagonistic towards each other yet also ceaselessly drawn together to debate - or mythologise - the merits of their own positions.

Enjoyable mystery story in the Agatha Christie style ie a limited cast of characters, one of whom will be the murderer, with semi-amateur sleuthing, a railway read.

[Zany · Rating 4 out of 5]

Opět se setkáváme s Borůvkou, tentokrát ovšem v Kanadě a stejně jako v páteru Knoxovi je jen vedlejší postavou, což mi ovšem na rozdíl od jiných čtenářů nijak zvlášť nevadí. Velká škoda je, že se nikdy nedočkáme Škvoreckým plánovaného vysvětlení, jak se Borůvka potažmo Eva do Kanady dostali. Kniha se od předchozích liší také tím, že jde jen o jeden případ a ne o více zločinů v samostatných povídkách.
Škvorecký ozvláštnil děj také použitím principu nespolehlivého vypravěče, kdy rodilí Kanaďané (navíc salonní levičáci jednou vyznávající Envera Hodžu a podruhé Mao Ce-tunga) neznalí života za železnou oponou chápou dosti zkresleně a hlavně úsměvně, co jim Sue (Zuzana Borůvková) a jiní členové české komunity vyprávějí o dění v Československu. To se mi na celé knize líbí snad nejvíc, na vysvětlenou snad poslouží ukázka:
„Také původ dalších dvou termínů, označujících jiné segmenty české komunity, se mi poněkud ztrácí v šeru: poúnoroví a posrpnoví. Domnívám se, že to má něco společného s vystěhovaleckou politikou: československá vláda asi povoluje vystěhování pouze ve dvou termínech ročně, v únoru a v srpnu. To ovšem není ještě všechno: posrpnoví se dále dělí na komunisty a nekomunisty, kdežto poúnoroví jsou všichni antikomunisti a panuje mezi nimi názor, že posrpnoví nekomunisti jsou ve skutečnosti kryptokomunisti. Zdá se tedy vše nasvědčovat tomu, že únorový termín je vyhrazen pro antikomunisty, snad proto, že je k emigraci do Kanady nejnevhodnější: přijedou přímo do nejkrutší severské zimy.“ nebo: „…příšerně kalorické jídlo, jemuž říkala ptáčci, ačkoliv o žádných hovězích ptácích nevím…“

[Ivan Orisek]

As some reviewers mention the fact that Czech emigrees were greatly concerned about their compatriots spying on them, the upshot is that Josef Skvorecky's own wife, Zdena Salivarova, was an StB informant (Statni bezpecnost - Czech Secret Police) and was informing StB who stopped at their Toronto publishing house called 68 Publishers to buy "anti-state" literature, such as hokey players of the Czech National Hockey Team on tour in Canada. Salivarova admits that much as she is listed in the published list of StB informers. The Czechs have a saying - "zivot tropi hlouposti" ("life makes for funny things").

[MJ Beaufrand · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this up hoping to read about a crime in Prague. Instead, it took place in Toronto and the narrator was this WASP-y guy, brother of a murdered girl, who didn't seem to mourn her much, and instead devoted himself to finding her murderer. Which is fine, but I kept wanting Skvorecky to go deeper. Instead, it had a kind of workmanlike quality. "The characters went here, then they went there."

[Czarny Pies · Rating 4 out of 5]

Skvorecky's great gift is his ability to explain the experience of living under Nazi or Soviet occupation to those of us who have spent our entire lives in an Anglo-Saxon liberal democracy. Skvorecky lived through five years of Nazi occupation and more than 20 years under a Soviet Regime. After fleeing Czechoslavakia in 1968, he obtained a teaching position at the University of Toronto. Here he gained great insight into the misconceptions that educated Anglo-Saxons have about Communist regimes. Thus he built his books to specifically address our ideas that were off-base.

In The Return of Lieutenant Boruvka, Skvorecky is in top form in his endeavour to educate North Americans about the difference between their lives and those of Central Europeans. It follows three Lieutenant Boruvka short story collections written in the G.K. Chesteron style while Skvorecky was in Czechoslavakia. The Return of Lieutenant Boruvka however is a novel composed in Canada. Boruvka is now in Canada having been forced to flee his homeland. Boruvka has fallen on hard times. He is working in Toronto as a janitor or parking lot attendant and barely making ends meet.

His daughter however stumbles upon a mystery and the Czech Father Brown returns to his vocation. The intrigue covers Canadian academia, the life of struggling Czech immigrants and the nefarious actions of informers spying on their fellow countrymen in Canada. This latter issue certainly strikes home. During the 1970s and 1980s I knew a large number of Czechs, Slovaks and Poles living in Toronto who were greatly saddened because they knew that anyone that they met from their countries might be an informer.

The book is filled with trademark Skvorecky humour. I particularly like his comments on tavern debating in Toronto in the 1980s. Skvorecky notes that Toronto is the only city in North America where a person can walk into a bar, announce that Moravia should be returned to Habsburg rule and be understood by most people in the room. Moreover, one would be guaranteed of finding someone else to take the other side in the argument.

Today of course it is very unlikely that the person would be either understood or debated with. You could however easily start a lively debate on the merits of elevener verus fiver shi'ism.

[Patrick · Rating 2 out of 5]

Skvorecky ends his tales of the melancholy Lieutenant Boruvka with this short novel about a murder in Toronto. However, the eponymous Lieutenant doesn't appear much in the book, and the investigation is led by the brother of the murder victim, a stockbroker, and his closed-minded and slightly stupid PI girlfriend. Instead of probing the morals of this New World he found himself in, Skvorecky seems content to gently caricature the petty political in-fighting of Czech emigres and left-wing attitudes of some Canadians in the early 70s. Unfortunately, the mystery hinges on coincidences and behaviors that are unbelievable, and the characters are uninteresting and shallowly drawn, with the Canadian narrator prone to little insight or interest beyond reveries about the nobility and bravery of these Czechs he has encountered.

[Cats 274 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tole bi šlo v kategorijo 3-4, ampak recimo 3, za ne pretiravat.

Kriminalka na drugačen, jasno prepoznavno češki način, čeprav se dogaja v Kanadi. Par histerično smešnih detajlov, soliden zaplet in čudaški liki. Glavni junak, poročnik Borovnica, se je pojavil v njegovih številnih krimi pripovedkah.

[Kate · Rating 2 out of 5]

For my full review click on the link below:
https://crossexaminingcrime.wordpress...