More Than One Life

chronicles several generations of an upper-middle-class Czech family. Beginning in the years preceding World War II, this lyrical novel concentrates on the narrator's tragically mismatched parents and the children's attempts to come to terms with each of them. As the narrator probes her past, she reconstructs childhood events by comparing her own memories with those of her siblings, coming to view her family with startling insights and with new respect, pity, guilt, and—ultimately—forgiveness.