Prague: Great city, horrible book.

It used to be when someone mentioned Prague I could only think back to that beautiful city I visited last summer. After a trip to the bookstore a couple of months ago, I unfortunately have to add a very bad novel to that list.

It's rare I read a book that leaves me wanting a few precious hours back, but Prague by Arthur Phillips is one of those. It's a novel about five young expatriates living, not in Prague, but in Budapest shortly after the fall of communism in 1990.

This book just never really got going for me. It was like nothing ever really made sense and it was just a story about the daily lives of these characters as they try to find themselves, along with a little fortune and romance. If there's a plot to this story, I couldn't find it.

I'm still pretty amazed how this book has won the awards that it has, but then again I've never claimed to be a literary aficionado. I guess that's why I'm posting comments on a blog and not in a newspaper.

So, if you like a book that meanders through things and never really gets to the point, read Prague. I have a copy to loan you. Hopefully you can make some sense out of it.