New books

Her parents believe Marta is smart and could become someone only if she went to university and didn’t fool around. Her younger sister thinks she’s a conceited dumbo, the older brother assumes she behaves like a small child and Robert, her colleague from work, guesses that she’s not all that bad. Her grandmother doesn’t recognize her anymore. This book is not about how others see Marta, however. Rather it can be viewed as Marta’s diary from which we find out what she really thinks and gets through as a nineteen-year-old. So far everything works out just fine but ahead of her is perhaps the most difficult and important year of her life. Petra Soukupová’s new novel tells a story of a teenage girl who is suddenly thrust into adulthood via a series of dramatic events. The narrative is accentuated by the language, which adequately expresses the thinking and locution of a young girl. Even though the author is gradually becoming more and more remote from her leading character – in terms of age, she can observe her fate from a certain distance and is able to picture and convincingly describe the feelings of a nineteen-year-old girl. Illustrated by Nikola Hoření