Trigger warnings for references to rape and sexual coercion.
I very rarely read Goodreads reviews (for a variety of reasons), but I had to dip into a few after I read Radka Denemarková’s novel, A Contribution to the History of Joy. I could not decide whether it was just me who didn’t understand the novel or if other readers couldn’t make sense of it either. Was I too dumb to understand what Denemarková was trying to tell me? Or was this book just not very well written? Reading the Goodreads reviews from readers who read the book in Polish and Czech reassured me that I wasn’t the only person to struggle with this novel. Julia and Peter Sherwood did a good job (though I had an issue with their choice to use a particular word) translating the novel, but translators can only do so much when there are entire sections of the novel that don’t fit and when the author wavers between highly abstract writing and realism.
Barring a very long epilogue constituted of one of the characters notes for a biography of former Czech president Edvard Beneš, A Contribution to the History of Joy concentrates on a detective who is trying to learn of a purported suicide was actually a murder and a trio of women who might’ve committed that murder. The detective notices a small mark on the neck of a dead business mogul that makes him wonder if someone helped the man die. The trio of women, we learn, are connected to the mogul’s death as part of a larger plan to mete out justice for women who’ve been let down by the law. They’ve been doing this for a very long time, though it appears that time has run out for their style of vengeance.
The novel moves back and forth from the perspective of the detective to Birgit and Diana, two members of the trio. While the detective digs into the women’s history and the roots of their quest, Birgit and Diana are pursuing more villains who have set up a human trafficking ring in Prague. Birgit and Diana are growing frustrated that they can’t find anyone willing to testify against the two people who groomed and trafficked them to rapists. They’ve never had to deal with the power of cyberbullying or the victim’s profound disillusionment with law enforcement. They exhaust a lot of options (criminal or otherwise) before deciding to take matters into their own hands, again.
This is as much meaning as I’ve been able to glean from A Contribution to the History of Joy. This meaning is outweighed by all of the questions I still have. Why are there passages about the detective and the widow of the dead mogul falling in instalove? Why does Denemarková seem to forget her highly abstract writing style, destroying a growing sense of dissociation from bodies? Are we supposed to buy Diana’s theories about how the body keeps the score after trauma? Why does Denemarková fail to develop the similarities between two women who traffic in other women? And what is up with the extended epilogue about Beneš, which I can’t determine the purpose of? Not only do I have questions, but I’m also left with the feeling of having my time wasted by this book.
One note about the translation: Julia and Peter Sherwood translate Denemarková’s Czech into British English. This isn’t a problem for me, usually, though I find words like “recce” a bit jarring. The translation choice I wondered about was their use of the word “cunt.” I wonder what the original Czech word was because this word is a lot more vulgar and insulting in American English than it is in British, Irish, or Australian English. My curiosity about the use of this word is just one more question to throw on the pile.
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss, for review consideration.