SOURCE: Berens, Emily. “Books Do Furnish a Life.” Spectator 266. no. 8491 (6 April 1991): 34.

In the following review, Berens provides a positive assessment of Too Loud a Solitude, noting its sophisticated and thought-provoking narrative.

Short, sharp and eccentric, this novel [Too Loud a Solitude], written as a monologue, reconfirms Bohumil Hrabal's reputation. The hapless and slightly ludicrous Hant'a has spent 35 years in a dingy Prague basement compacting paper, as we are told at the start of every chapter. He has, by his own admission, unwittingly absorbed the literature that he has saved from the grasp of his hydraulic press. Books are rescued, savoured and stored in his attic where he goes to relish a beautiful sentence, sipping it like a liqueur until the thought dissolves in him like alcohol.

The prose darts chaotically from Hant'a's past memories to his romantic hopes and escapist dreams. Like Walter Mitty and J. Alfred Prufrock...