Mája’s mother fled the Czech Republic during the Soviet occupation and came to Canada, but when Mája was a child, her mother abandoned the family and later died by suicide. Mája’s father remarried, but with her relationship with her father strained Mája has always felt like an outsider amongst her step-mother and younger half-siblings.
At the point we meet her, Mája, now in her late 20s, is living in Canada, betrothed to Drew, and struggling to write a novel for which she’s signed a contract and received an advance. Life has left her with too many unanswered questions, and Drew’s devotion to her is not enough to quell her restless heart. Moreover, she’s having recurring nightmares and suffering from a skin condition that seems to have no cause and no cure.
Mája breaks up with Drew and leaves Canada on a mission to track down her mother’s Czech family. First, though, she stops in New Zealand. After her mother’s disappearance, this is where she spent her school years with her aunt Gina — her father’s sister. Gina takes Mája to a “dance camp,” and here she meets Kuba, one of the workshop leaders, a charismatic teacher and musician, something of a New Age philosopher, and, as chance would have it, a Czech national. Despite misgivings, Mája is physically and spiritually drawn to him, and she agrees to meet him in Prague.
Once she moves into his flat the novel focuses squarely on Mája’s turbulent relationship with the mercurial Kuba, who makes frequent declarations of his love for her (lásko is the Czech word for love) and shares his vision of their life together. Mája, afflicted with crippling self-doubt and confused about who she is and what she wants from life, is in a vulnerable state and allows herself to be pulled into Kuba’s orbit, giving up on her novel and adopting his wishes and beliefs as her own.
For the next year she swallows her skepticism and follows Kuba from one New Age event to the next, taking part in all manner of rituals and ceremonies—some of which involve the ingestion of hallucinogens—and meeting Kuba’s many, mostly female, acolytes. But over time she slowly awakens to an awareness that all is not right and begins to set her sights on a life after Kuba.
Mája narrates her own story, and Cooper’s novel challenges the reader because Mája is not always reliable or likeable — she can be judgmental and frustratingly indecisive. As we learn more about Kuba’s behaviour, the reader wonders why she doesn’t just leave him — but it’s never that simple.
The story Mája tells is a love story, achingly truthful and filled with disturbing revelations. At times Lásko may be difficult to read, but Catherine Cooper’s sparkling prose and lean sentences generate irresistible forward momentum that gives Mája’s angst-ridden tale the quality of a page-turner.
Catherine Cooper’s sparkling prose and lean sentences generate irresistible forward momentum that gives Mája’s angst-ridden tale the quality of a page-turner … A writer who is not afraid to explore the darker recesses of the human heart.
This story of a young woman trying to come to terms with her mother’s legacy while searching for a clear path toward herself is an admirable sophomore effort by a writer who is not afraid to explore the darker recesses of the human heart.
Catherine Cooper is a Nova Scotian writer whose debut novel, White Elephant, was a finalist for the Amazon Canada First Novel Award. She’s also the author of Western Home, a collection of short stories.
Publisher: Freehand Books (September 30, 2023)
Paperback 5.5″ x 8.5″ | 304 pages
ISBN: 978-1-9906-0134-7
Ian Colford’s short fiction has appeared in many literary publications, in print and online. His work has been shortlisted for the Thomas H. Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, the Journey Prize, the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, and others. His latest novel, The Confessions of Joseph Blanchard, was the winner of the 2022 Guernica Prize and was published by Guernica Editions in 2023. He lives in Halifax.
