Play Book Tag discussion

Tomas is a great surgeon in Czechoslovakia in the 1960s who enjoys an extremely varied sex life but has a young wife, Tereza, who knows this and wishes he were monogamous. Tomas' closest friend and lover is Sabina and she has a lover called Franz who is a professor in Geneva. This is the story of those four people during the Russian invasion and occupation.

Frankly, I can't understand why this gets such good reviews. I didn't like or understand the people and even the dog was annoying because Tomas only gave him to Tereza hoping the dog would love her and keep her off his back! I also didn't like the way the author kept interrupting the story to explain what he meant by certain passages. And interrupting the flow to tell us that he hadn't mentioned something before is just irritating.

The only interesting parts of the story were the descriptions of life under communist rule; having to be constantly on guard over what you said and did in case someone reported you, for example. Also the point that artists and athletes were chosen because of party loyalty rather than talent might explain a few things!

Overall, I'm not sorry I read it but I certainly wouldn't bother reading it again.