A sentimental novel is not a novel, and certainly not a sentimental novel.It is as rough and sharp as grinded Ice hockey skates. Two people, two narrators, one day, two places and two encounters with death become the trigger for a montage of memories, experiences, false conclusions and crooked mirrors. He becomes the bearer of bad news, she must deal with a family legacy…

We follow two stories that intersect at one point and continue together. Their lives resemble a road lined with the carcasses of run-over animals; they are filled with missed opportunities, moral failures, unfulfilled ambitions – and above all, they lack love. The common denominator of their existence is the talented Eliska, who disappeared on the eve of her graduation from the academy fifteen years ago.

“It’s still the same river, but the riverbed and the speed of flow are different. And especially the direction in which the water flows is different. In her first novel, Bellové already has the need to dwell on the dark side of fate. The basic communication code here is cruelty; man is, if not directly a wolf to man, then a useful or useless being.”

— Aktuálně

“The not very large text is all the more polished, its density requiring focused collaboration so that we don’t miss any of the clues as we try to make sense of the multiangle relationship, where two women share one man and two men share one woman, sharing their woes along with the bodily fluids that flow.”

— Novinky

Translations