Just as the movie “Blade Runner” is better than the book it’s based on, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” the movie “Spaceman” is better than “Spaceman of Bohemia,” and for similar reasons. Still, I liked the book, and I am glad I’ve been introduced to this author. Kalfar has a pleasing voice, he’s young, and perhaps he’ll write stories that I find more appealing, in the future.
“Spaceman of Bohemia” reads like a compelling novella about a lone spaceflight to a mysterious cloud which was stretched to novel length by florid descriptions of common things, many of which felt like creative writing exercises (uncooked bacon “still stinking of the living beast,” a train ride filled “the smell of of morning breath and commuter armpit sweat” which reminded him of “rancid sausage”), and a secondary story about the fall of communism which wasn’t as interesting as the personal story of the spaceman and his disaffected wife. The director of the Netflix movie made the right choice by cutting out the fall-of-communism part entirely.
As an aside, whoever wrote the jacket copy for the publisher (which I see here on Goodreads) didn’t read the book carefully. Jakub’s grandparents do not come off as “doting” (though they did love him), his wife was not “devoted” (that was the problem), and the spider did not talk about the “deliciousness of bacon,” but the deliciousness of Nutella.