No Saints or Angels

This fictional book has the ability to make you believe it's real. The writer's vivid descriptions of the scenes and places, as well as his detailed effort to make the characters come to life are applaudable. As I was reading it, I thought I was about to uncover the truth about the "crime" Kristyna had done - she was supposedly to have killed her husband. ("I killed my husband last night.") I was so ready to just immerse myself to find out about the real thing that happened, only to get hooked on Jana, Kristyna's daughter. The story is about feeling lost, depressed, and about hope too, as the characters develop and look for something to make themselves feel better, and be better than who they are. Very engaging, and you'd be so anxious to know what happens next, after you calmed yourself down to read it. You won't regret spending some time on it. I finished it in a day just because I couldn't do anything else unless I finally reached the end.

I completely disagree with an earlier review which states that some of the characters' resolutions are "simple." Absolutely not. Without giving anything away for other readers, the characters are and remain complex. Their futures are left with much ambiguity. Even in the first-person accounts, Klima is subtle in the characters' self-deceptions and truths...This is a one of the most human novels i've ever read.

Ivan Klima's Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light was set in Prague, in 1989 on the eve of the Velvet Revolution. Rippling through that work was an undercurrent of hope for the future. The promise of freedom was rife and it came coupled with the expectation that life in a free society would be infinitely better than life under an oppressive regime. Fast forward to Prague in 1998. The Czech Republic has been `free' for almost 10 years. Freedom has no doubt brought great benefits but for the protagonist's of No Saints or Angels freedom may be just another word for nothing left to lose. In Klima's words freedom is the "gateway to an unknown space where even adults get lost in." No Saints or Angels is about three people who seem to have gotten lost. No Saints or Angels centers on three main characters. Krystina is a divorced, middle-aged dentist. Krystina was born in 1953 on the day that Stalin, her devoted Communist father's greatest hero, died. Her father was a strict disciplinarian, callous to his wife and daughter, and a faithful party apparatchik. Krystina's daughter, Jana, is a 16 year old schoolgirl. Jan is a 30 year old and former student of Krystina's ex-husband. Jan is a government employee tasked with investigation criminal acts of the old regime. Various chapters are narrated in the voice of each of these three protagonists. As the story opens Krystina is alone, lonely, and has no real focus except her work and the care and feeding of her daughter Jana. Her ex-husband Karel is terminally ill with cancer. She is also more than a bit disconcerted by a series of threatening letters she has been receiving lately. Jana is sixteen and unbeknownst to her mother, she is becoming increasingly involved in the type of teenage behavior often associated with `democratic' societies: sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Jan, whose father was persecuted during the old regime, is nervous about political pressures. Krystina and Jan meet and begin an affair. Jana's drug use becomes apparent even to the remarkably naïve Krystina. Krystina is tasked with going through her late father's possessions and his correspondence reveals an extraordinary family secret. As the story progresses to its rather calm conclusion each character, in his or her own voice reveal their fears and concerns with their life. Although each is free since 1989 in a socio-political sense they remain a prisoner of their own past, a past that cannot be changed but can merely be contemplated, again and again. Each is burdened with the past and the daily impact that the past has on their present existence. Each character carries within themselves grave uncertainty about their own future and their role in life. On the day Krystina was born her father cried, not because of the joy of his daughter's birth but because of his anguish over the death of Stalin. Klima has him cry out "What are we going to do now?" "How are we going to live?" These are the same questions that Krys

This is the first, but certainly not the last, book by Ivan Klima I have read. The divorced woman, estranged from father, not understanding her teenage daughter, young lover book blurb lead to very low expectations. Instead I discovered a well-written, thought-provoking book that explores, among other things, the role of religion in providing meaning. While some of this theme relates back to childhood experience of "church" without understanding of the ritual, some relates to using belief as the motivating force in drug rehabilitation and some relates to politics as a substitute for religion. Placed in a world in transition - WWII, Communism and post-communist - the setting permits the plot to explore a variety of views and a variety of ways to adjust to the changes views. If you like thought-provoking novels, this is for you.

The theme of countries that were brutalized by Germany in World War II only to then face new masters in the form of The Soviet Union has been written before. Ivan Klima adds a new terrible aspect to this history that portrays those that survived as persons suffering from an even more acute pain, if that is possible. The book is unrelenting in the revelations and histories of characters both alive and dead, and while there is some hope in the novel, it is fairly gray, a deep shade of gray.The author increases the pain his characters must deal with by making them much more than simply survivors. He burdens them with family histories that contributed either to their family's pain, or the pain of their nation. Then there is the complication of the deceptions that one-generation feels is necessary to protect the youngest in the family's line. While well intended and expeditious, invariably it is the wrong decision to make, and the negative consequences it provokes are worse than the original truth. Deception also presupposes that those being mislead are ignorant of the truth, and will remain that way, bad presumption and bad consequences.The author also presents the consequences of lost continuity. In a macro sense the subject is war, arguably the greatest disruptor of history, and on a micro level there are the relationships, or what pass for relationships, that are either fragments of what they should be, are based on false presumptions, or wrongly credited actions.There is a wealth of human drama that takes place in this book as the author displays the results of decisions that may be taken by one generation, resented and hated by the next, and still continue to harm the generations that follow.