Three Novels: Hordubal, Meteor, an Ordinary Life

Rating:
Summary: One of my all-time favorites, beatiful and wise.
Review: I first read these three novels in college, and I've never completely gotton over them, especially the first and last in the set. The basic philosophical question, which is never stated outright, but informs the plot of each novel is "Can we ever really understand another human being." In the final novel, "An Ordinary Life," the author's first person protagonist finds he must ask another question: "Can I ever really understand myself." In answering the second question, he is able (unwittingly) to answer the first. "Hordubal," the first of these novels, is a compelling and haunting rural tragedy, set in 1930's Czechoslovakia. An illiterate Czech farmer who has spent eight years as a miner in America returns to his family in Czechoslovakia, to find his wife and child alienated from him. Within weeks he is murdered. A detective suspects a gypsy boyfriend of the pale wife, but he remains troubled by the idea that he has missed something. The facts are ascertained, but the mystery of Hordubal

Rating:
Summary: A masterpiece of humane inquiry and insight.
Review: What can we know? But the deeper question is how can we know--and be part of--the universal? In his humane and personal voice, one of the great authors of the 20th Century, ever himself, finds us in the sweet and sad final novel finding, within ourselves, all of us. It surpasses beauty.