The Visible World

Mark Slouka

This story is narrated in poignant, subtle and poetic prose. Told in two parts it focuses on the search by a young man, for the truth about his mother's first love during World War II in Czechoslovakia. It was only after I finished reading this book, and reread the first half again in quick succession, that I truly appreciated the beauty of this novel. Persevere and you will be rewarded.

Extract

It was Svicka who stopped him. 'Wait,' he said - and that word was the pivot on which everything turned. Everything. Or maybe not. Maybe she came to see it as the thing that only made visible what had been coming their way forever, calmly measuring its steps even as they played and grew, fought and lost, separated now by fifty kilometers, now by five, even as my father and I waited patiently in the wings ...

Parallels