Czech Republic » Michal Viewegh » Báječná léta pod psa, Výchova dívek v Čechách (Bringing Up Girls in Bohemia)
Michal Viewegh:Báječná léta pod psa, Výchova dívek v Čechách (Bringing Up Girls in Bohemia)
Our unnamed hero is a teacher, as in other countries a very badly paid job but also it would be writer. At the start of the book, he receives some post – the proof of his novel but also an invitation from the local millionaireKrai to give his daughter extra teaching. Our hero knows. both Krai’s daughters who attend/attended the school where he teaches. He assumes that it is.Agata, the youngest, whom he will be teaching.
He arrives at the posh house where Krai lives. As he approaches the gates magically open, he assumes for him. Firstly, he is nearly run over by a Volkswagen and then two burly thugs jump on him and proceed to beat him up. He eventually manages to make it clear who he is and they comment So you’re the next one? in a sarcastic voice. He is surprised at the garden which looks as though it has been managed by someone completely incompetent. However he meets.Krai who wants him to teach his other daughter., Beata creative writing as she wants to be a writer. He is fairly impressed with the offer but asks for time to think about it, but the next day, outside the school at lunchtime,Krai is waiting for him and offers him lunch and he agrees to teach his daughter.
When he turns up, he is greeted by his naked host who was planning to play tennis. He goes to.Beata’s room and finds her lying on her bed, pretty well immobile. She does not react in the slightest to his discussion. This continues for the whole session. He reports back.Krai to who does not seem too discouraged.
On the second attempt, he fares no better though he does get some reaction from her. Fuck off,” she said slowly” She said nothing else for the remaining one hundred and fifteen minutes..
Only afterwards, speaking to her father does he find out more. This is not, as he thought, about creative writing but she is in a state of depression because she has broken up with her boyfriend and his job is to cheer her up. Some sort of pedagogical-cum-psychological service. The next session is not much of an improvement. She keeps reaching out for a glass of wine and in doing reveals more flesh than she should. She also farts loudly. I’ll tell you something: I can’t stand teachers, and most of all I can’t stand young teachers full of the joys of spring!
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It gets more complicated whenKrai turns up at his house after midnight and instructs him to come with him. They go to what is apparently a high class brothel where they see a young man dancing with a much older woman. The young man of course is.Beata’s ex. He reports back to his wife as he has spent the night at a brothel.
While all this is going on we are following events at the school. We have the woman teacher who believes that the communist were very retrograde in sexual matters and wants to change this. She seems to wander around with 30 copies of pictures of the cross-section of a vagina. The principal has very cleverly managed to buy a whole load of goods which the US embassy no longer wants which includes a jeep which he uses a drive around and military clothes which he wears bearing the name of their previous owner.
The school seems to be somewhat chaotic with the gym teacher strung up from the rafters by some of the pupils. The end of the year celebrations get so much out of hand that the police have to intervene.
However, he and his family managed to escape to the Adriatic or their holidays or, rather think that they do. After a few days.Krai and his henchmen turned up and he is summoned away, leaving his wife and daughter on their own, She will be handsomely rewarded byKrai.
Back home, he is once again withBeata and Agata. The relationship seems much improved, not least as he gets involved in helping her with a major overhaul of her quarters, including trips to Ikea and similar stores.
Beata produces a story she has written called d My Dad and I. The father in question bears little resemblance to her real father.
This book is called Bringing Up Girls in Bohemia. However it seems that the only girls he is bringing up are the daughters of someone else. While he seems very very fond of his own daughter we see very little interaction with her and Krai and his wife seem little involved in bringing up of their own daughters, apart from Krai’s hiring of our narrator.
However, it is now the new school year and he is back at school. To his surprise there is a new teacher. – Beata. Not surprisingly, the older teachers have their ways of dipping things and expect everyone to follow a suit butBeata challenges them. Our narrator comments>I was amazed to find what a good teacher she immediately became. however, she does take up writing. However, he writes a story about her called.The Female Intellectual. partially about Beata, which we get in its entirety. It is not very good.
He does give us an interesting summation of the Czech mentality: wo essential emotions characterise the Central European mentality: melancholy and exaggerated hilarity\ The one is scarcely conceivable without the other. Melancholy engenders farce, farce leaves a residue of melancholy, no, this comment was not made by him but by a writer e called Josef Kroutvor who has been translated into German but not English.
Overall this was a very enjoyable book. It was very witty, told a good story and gave an excellent view of Czechoslovakia in the period after the fall of communism.
Publishing history
First published by Cesky spisovatel in 1994
First published in English in 1997 by Readers International
Translated by A.G. Brain