Bon voyage

The book is framed by two endings: as a girl, Johana, named after Joan of Arc, must decide which parent to stay with when her mother's marriage falls apart, and as a woman she has no choice when her husband ends their own. In between, love heals the traumas of the past: a firstborn son and a daughter arrive, and the orphaned Hetrik is welcomed too, a family of five and a dog like something from an advertisement. Johana spins in the merry-go-round of a mother of three, happy and sure of her husband. Told in short episodes like stage scenes or film shots, from childhood games with her brothers to an encounter with the secret policeman who watched her mother, the story searches for faith in God, in love and in art, and asks why.

AI-generated summary

About the book

Form

Novel

Length

96 pages in the original

Genres

Love, Family (assigned by AI)

Set in

Slovakia

First published

2010 by Artforum

Author's age

45 when first published

ISBN

9788089445141 (original)