SOURCE: “Running out of Breath,” in Spectator, Vol. 280, No. 8845, February 14, 1998, 31–32.

In the following negative review, Simmons notes his disappointment in Škvorecký's stories in Headed for the Blues.

[Headed for the Blues] is a memoir plus ten stories written in English by the author Josef Škvorecký who now lives in Toronto. I suppose I am not unique in approaching the work of writers from eastern Europe with some humility. They have been through a mill that never ground me. The story is told in an impressionistic, unbuttoned, free-association style that is hard to follow, although partly elucidated by notes. Certain themes recur. Škvorecký's first memory is of seeing from his ‘stroller’ a dead frog on the road; he mentions pregnant women in prison whose children are buried and gnawed by moles as soon as they are born, and the mothers sent to the gallows...