Ve stínu mastodonta - pestré povídky – Nosková Věra (2008)

The first three stories in the short story collection In the Shadow of the Mastodon draw from the atmosphere and historical realities of the 1960s. The fifteen-year-old ambitious heroine of the story The Turning Summer experiences the awakening of her femininity and a social enlightenment with the help of the son of a Swedish factory owner. High school students, encouraged by fruit wine, spice up the harsh reality of dairy farming with timid erotic escapades in the barn in the story Cattle Breeders of the Fourth Category. Love rarely happens, I won't wait for it without a man - thinks the hedonistic girl from the story Leaps to Love. Mother in Action and Nicknames refresh with humor reminiscent of the perspective and self-irony of writer Betty McDonald. The story Cream Sauce at the Virgin's Mother, subtitled Oedipal Ballad, follows the mental processes of a recently divorced woman, whose chain of coincidences leads her into the arms of an eager virgin, thus beginning a story full of embarrassments, compassion, and extraordinary reactions. The last three stories - False Michurin, Two Widows, and In the Shadow of the Mastodon - deal with physically and mentally powerful manipulators and their male victims. The subdued men dream of a world without reins, of love, internally rebel, and escape. Into the story of the last tale...