SOURCE: Bradbrook, B. R. Review of No Saints or Angels, by Ivan Klíma. World Literature Today 74, no. 3 (summer 2000): 670.

In the following review, Bradbrook lauds the interior monologue and narrative structure of No Saints or Angels.

The effect of Ivan Klíma's traumatic childhood experience under the Nazis often appears in his writings as a tone of gloom. In his latest novel, No Saints or Angels, the gloom has intensified into a serious concern and a search for the causes of unhappiness in human relations. A decade after the fall of communism in Klíma's homeland, the destructive legacy of the odious regime still upsets indirectly the balance of normality in Klíma's excellent analysis of the fact that not everything is well in the renewed democracy as yet.

The heroine, Kristýna, still feels the shadow of her father's communist past, as well as his misbehavior toward...