Original title: Dlouhá trať
Genre: short stories
Publisher:
Host, 2020
ISBN: 978-80-275-0372-8
Pages: 192
Sometimes we forget what we’re running for in the middle of the race… After three novels, Viktorie Hanišová has opted for the tighter space of the short story.
There are times when life just stops. Death, personal failure, lost illusion, simple fear – all are necessarily accompanied by anxiety, doubt and questioning. There are moments that force us to consider our own being in a bright light focused beyond convention and ‘being like other people’. And what this light shows us is often simultaneously frightening, spellbinding and enticing…
Linked by theme, these brisk prose pieces are like well-intentioned slaps; they hurt, but they wake us up. In common with the protagonists of the collection A Long Track, the reader keeps stopping and asking, What’s the sense of all this? It may not be pleasant to brood on, but once the thinking starts, there is no way back. We can say the same about A Long Track – it may not be a nice read, but it is certainly an unputdownable one.
"Each of the short stories in A Long Track is based on the solid foundation of a particular idea, motif or direction towards a preconceived dénouement. And although all the characters share a common existential crisis (albeit each their own particular one), these are sufficiently diverse and distinctive. Viktorie Hanišová continues to focus on the factual details of her characters’ everyday lives, but the short story format makes her work more economically with the everyday, which benefits the texts. Viktorie Hanišová’s regular readers may now be even more curious about where her authorial journey will take her next."
Kamila Drahoňovská, Iliteratura.cz
"Hanišová is best at portraying the family microcosm. Just a few good turns and she unleashes social drama. (...) Even though the writer promised last year that she was done with childhood traumas, family pathologies still interest her. Her stories are gritty and written with an understanding of the despair and loneliness of the suicidal. With the exception of one story, however, they don’t come across as truly depressing, but more like an empathic attempt by the well-fed to believe the hungry."
Magdalena Čechlovská, Aktuálně
