From Publishers Weekly
Skvorecky left his native Czechoslovakia in 1969 in the wake of the Soviet invasion and has been living in Canadian exile ever since. For the last 30 years, he has published copiously in Czech and has fared well in English translation (The Cowards; The Engineer of Human Souls; etc.). Now in his 70s, he has written his first book in English an intermittently eloquent if not entirely persuasive fiction, part murder mystery and part campus novel. The protagonist is an unnamed Skvorecky-like professor in Canadian exile, whose wife, Sidonia, a writer and editor, is being cruelly slandered in the Czech Republic by resentful postcommunist climbers. Meanwhile, life on the Toronto campus is disrupted by an unlikely murder. Two radically dissimilar worlds are here juxtaposed and interwoven: Central Europe, with its ferociously bitter animosities and treacheries left over from the Soviet era; and bland, tidy, middle-class Canada. The account of the relentless hounding of Sidonia and her bitter end is almost unbearably poignant, but the dull mystery story does not hold up its end of the bargain. In addition, Skvorecky has perhaps gotten carried away with the mimicry of spoken English. He has the non-native speaker's joyful enthusiasm for the little quirks that make English idiomatic, but the impression created by the text is not one of authentic talk so much as relentless chatter. Still, the novel is notable for its evocation of the professor's enduring love and respect for his brilliant, long-suffering wife. (May)Forecast: Skvorecky treads familiar ground in his latest novel, but it's being written in English may spark more reviews than usual. A charming photograph of the author and his wife in their youth on the jacket may attract browsers.Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
kvoreck", the well-known Czech writer who has lived in Canada for decades, relates in this "crime novel" the stories of two transgressions and their impact on those involved. Taking place in Toronto at Edenvale College, the investigation into the mysterious murder of a professor uncovers a jumble of suspicious alibis, romantic entanglements, and professional rivalries involving both students and faculty. At the same time, the narrator and his wife, Sidonia, both ?migr?s from the repressive Communist rule in Czechoslovakia, find out that she has been named as an informer according to state documents from the distant past. They travel to Prague in an attempt to clear her name, but accusations, news reports, and innuendoes weave a web of confusion and contradiction around the entire affair, and she becomes an innocent victim of her own supposed crime. Told with much humor in an informal, improvisational style, this short novel interweaves two stories in a narrative that is absorbing and enjoyable to read. The depth of feeling with which kvoreck" writes about the episode in Prague may suggest that some of the story is autobiographical; kvoreck" was, in fact, a professor at a college in Toronto and shares much in common with this narrator. This work treats some themes kvoreck" has worked with before (most recently in The Tenor Saxophonist's Story) and provides a good introduction to previous works by this internationally respected author. Recommended for all contemporary literature collections. Jim Coan, SUNY Coll. Lib. at Oneonta Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
A never-named literature professor at a Toronto-area college, a specialist in detective novels, tells the story of his amusement with a real-life murder while he simultaneously witnesses the spiritual murder of his wife, Sidonia. The couple are emigres from Czechoslovakia's fallen Communist regime, and her name has turned up on "the List," a muckraking publisher's roster of supposed collaborators with the Communist-era secret police. The news drives Sidonia into alcoholism, a world of pain that parallels the quasi-comical episode of an actual murder at Edenvale College, the garroting of a math professor's cheating husband. The professor delights in the case and, in his office or atop his favorite bar stool, discusses clues and alibis with his tubby student, Dorothy Sayers (!), or with the campus beauty queen, Candace Quentin. The airy humor of this badinage schizophrenically contrasts with the narrator's serious recollections of his and Sidonia's life under Communism. An odd but thoroughly readable combination of amusement and grimness. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
"Potent and deeply affecting . . . building slowly . . . to a powerful conclusion."—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"Two Murders combines genres for which Škvorecký is well known: the thinly disguised autobiographical novel and the murder mystery . . . [He] has proved himself to be the preeminent Czech interpreter of the theme of home and exile, in his life and in his work."—Neil Bermel,The New York Times Book Review

"This novel . . . offers the reader both sides of an obscure and unsolvable story, the here and now inflected by the there and then, a complex bio-mystery about the Kafka-esque machinations of politics."—Aritha van Herk, The Globe and Mail (Toronto)

"What's remarkable is that Two Murders in My Double Life is the first work that Mr. Škvorecký has written in his adopted language, yet it contains all the subtle linguistic byplay that characterizes what he originally wrote in Czech."—Douglas Fetherling, The Ottawa Citizen



Book Description
"A complex bio-mystery about the Kafkaesque machinations of politics." (Aritha van Herk, The Globe and Mail) In Josef Skvorecký's first novel written in English, the narrator lives in two worlds: the exile world of post-Communist Czechoslovakia, where old feuds, treacherous betrayals, and friendships that have lasted through wars, occupations, and revolutions survive; and the fatuously self-congratulatory comfortable world of a Canadian university, in which grave attention is given to matters such as whether a certain male professor has left his office door open wide enough while interviewing a female student. Murder suddenly intrudes upon both of these worlds. One features a young female sleuth, a college beauty queen, professional jealousies, and a neat conclusion. The other is a tragedy caused by evil social forces, in which a web of lies works insidiously to entangle Sidonia, who is a publisher of suppressed books and the narrator's wife. A brilliantly stylish tour de force in which the bright, sarcastic comedy of one tale sharply contrasts with the dark, elegiac bitterness of the other, Two Murders in My Double Life confirms Skvorecký's reputation as one of our most versatile, engaging, and compassionate writers.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

In Josef Škvorecký's first novel written in English, the narrator lives in two radically dissimilar worlds: the exile world of the post-Communist Czech Republic where old feuds, treacherous betrayals, and friendships persevere; and the comfortable, albeit bland world of middle-class Canada. Murder intrudes upon both world. One features a young female sleuth, a college beauty queen, jealousy in the world of academia, and a neat conclusion. The other is a tragedy caused by evil social forces and philosophies, in which a web of lies insidiously entangles Sidonia, the narrator's wife. A brilliantly stylish tour de force in which the bright, sarcastic comedy of one tale sharply contrasts with the dark, elegiac bitterness of the other, Two Murders in My Double Life confirms Škvorecký's reputation as a versatile and engaging writer.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Skvorecky left his native Czechoslovakia in 1969 in the wake of the Soviet invasion and has been living in Canadian exile ever since. For the last 30 years, he has published copiously in Czech and has fared well in English translation (The Cowards; The Engineer of Human Souls; etc.). Now in his 70s, he has written his first book in English an intermittently eloquent if not entirely persuasive fiction, part murder mystery and part campus novel. The protagonist is an unnamed Skvorecky-like professor in Canadian exile, whose wife, Sidonia, a writer and editor, is being cruelly slandered in the Czech Republic by resentful postcommunist climbers. Meanwhile, life on the Toronto campus is disrupted by an unlikely murder. Two radically dissimilar worlds are here juxtaposed and interwoven: Central Europe, with its ferociously bitter animosities and treacheries left over from the Soviet era; and bland, tidy, middle-class Canada. The account of the relentless hounding of Sidonia and her bitter end is almost unbearably poignant, but the dull mystery story does not hold up its end of the bargain. In addition, Skvorecky has perhaps gotten carried away with the mimicry of spoken English. He has the non-native speaker's joyful enthusiasm for the little quirks that make English idiomatic, but the impression created by the text is not one of authentic talk so much as relentless chatter. Still, the novel is notable for its evocation of the professor's enduring love and respect for his brilliant, long-suffering wife. (May) Forecast: Skvorecky treads familiar ground in his latest novel, but it's being written in English may spark more reviews than usual. A charming photograph of the author and his wife in their youth on the jacket may attract browsers. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

kvoreck", the well-known Czech writer who has lived in Canada for decades, relates in this "crime novel" the stories of two transgressions and their impact on those involved. Taking place in Toronto at Edenvale College, the investigation into the mysterious murder of a professor uncovers a jumble of suspicious alibis, romantic entanglements, and professional rivalries involving both students and faculty. At the same time, the narrator and his wife, Sidonia, both migr s from the repressive Communist rule in Czechoslovakia, find out that she has been named as an informer according to state documents from the distant past. They travel to Prague in an attempt to clear her name, but accusations, news reports, and innuendoes weave a web of confusion and contradiction around the entire affair, and she becomes an innocent victim of her own supposed crime. Told with much humor in an informal, improvisational style, this short novel interweaves two stories in a narrative that is absorbing and enjoyable to read. The depth of feeling with which kvoreck" writes about the episode in Prague may suggest that some of the story is autobiographical; kvoreck" was, in fact, a professor at a college in Toronto and shares much in common with this narrator. This work treats some themes kvoreck" has worked with before (most recently in The Tenor Saxophonist's Story) and provides a good introduction to previous works by this internationally respected author. Recommended for all contemporary literature collections. Jim Coan, SUNY Coll. Lib. at Oneonta Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The author of The Tenor Saxophonist's Story (1997), among others, turns to the tried-and-true form of the play-within-a-play-with results that fail to allay its own artificialities. In politically correct Edenvale College, an unnamed narrator teaches a seminar on writing detective fiction, and studies the campus denizens, mainly the young women in his own class, to use as fodder for his mystery novels. As he observes the comely Candace Quentin in the office of Professor James F. Cooper across the hall, he notes with keen interest that Cooper closes his door, definitely against Edenvale rules. And when Candace rushes from Cooper's office in tears, the writer-observer's little gray cells are thoroughly engaged. As he follows events and continues parrying with the young women, Professor Mary Mather's husband, Raymond Hammett, is murdered. Meanwhile, back in the homeland-in the days of communist rule-the narrator's wife Sidonia has been named, with others, as a spy, and has been further pilloried by the editor of Kill Kommunism (in an article entitled "Put Your Cards on the Table, Mrs. Sidonia!") and by enemies disguised as friends. The story moves back and forth between the mystery of Hammett's murder at Edenvale and the plot to destroy Sidonia. Along the way, the narrator spends a great deal of time at the Lame Duck, the college pub, solving one crime and worrying the other. ￯﾿ﾽkvorecký's portrait of the writer unable to minister to the psychic needs of a loved one while absorbed in watching human nature is brilliantly amusing. But Two Murders isn't so much about the frailties of writers as it is a reflection on the vagaries of political correctness suited up as anovel.And, on that level, it falters.