#810 The Angel- Bohumil Hrabal

#810 The Angel- Bohumil Hrabal

We slip once again behind the steel curtain early in the cold war. In an industrial waste setting, steel workers toil side by side with female prisoners. The workers get paid, and move freely in and out of the site but do the same work. Lenka, a prisoner befriends Mr. Hulikan and clings to him for a sense of hope and normalcy. Her despair and bitterness is momentarily silenced in small examples of human interaction. Given the circumstances anybody can be a guardian angel.

Notable Passage: “A stack of disabled typewriters, the consequence, he assumed, of a direct hit if a typewriter factory, their keys grinning in the sunlight like teeth in a dead man’s soul.”

Rating: 8-8-8-8 Total= 32