Wojciech Kuczok: Senność (Sleepiness)

My impression after reading the first twenty pages was that the way Kuczok describes the world around him seems to drag forever. I don’t think I’ve read many books where sentences are a page long! It was a bit tiring for a while and I thought about putting the book away and grabbing something else. And then the story suddenly became interesting, the characters more real and the attention to detail more fascinating.

The book takes us through three stories of three different people who do not know each other but who share a common theme – loneliness in the world full of people.

Adam, a freshly qualified doctor from a small village whose parents are oh-so-proud of his achievement and noble profession but will not accept his interest in the same gender.
Robert, a famous book writer with his lack of inspiration for his next award winning novel and with a very interesting family who are impatiently awaiting the novel to come out.
Roza, a billboard face and ex-actress with a husband who loves numbers and logic more than he loves her. It was logic that made him marry her and not love, so no surprise she doesn’t feel fulfilled in the relationship. To make things worse she suffers from an unusual illness – she falls asleep every time she gets excited.

After overcoming the initial dislike for Kuczok’s narrative I really started to enjoy the way he writes. He has a really good ear for the Polish language, its beauty, regional dialects, word games and, most of all, a spot on way of describing what happens inside the mind and soul of his main characters. You really get to know them, think the way they think, feel the way they feel.

The loneliness, the main theme of the book, can be felt on each page, heard in each sentence of any of the characters. Expressed by Robert’s passion for creating stories of people’s lives based on the observation of their legs when they walk by the window of his basement office. By Robert’s fater-in-law’s hectic desire to videotape each of his TV appearances. By Adam’s will to heal people. It’s overwhelming. It makes you realize that it is everywhere around you. Until you find someone to share it with. Kuczok says: “people can only live in other people, depression is nothing else but homelessness, depression only touches people who don’t have anyone to live in”. The ending may seem a bit cheesy with the “lived happily ever after” but I do recommend this book for its art of word and feelings.

Around the same time the book was published the movie based on the same script was released in cinemas. Directed by Magda Piekorz who also directed Pregi, another book based on Kuczok’s novel. I haven’t seen the movie – was it any good?

My rating: YYYYY