Edyta Szalek: A Dream of the Green Eyelids (Sen Zielonych Powiek)

Isn’t it a guilty pleasure to tuck yourself in a blanket on a sofa with a cup of nice tea on a pleasant evening with a good book. It is my guilty pleasure at least. And some books make you just re-fill that cup of tea until the sunrise the next morning. This is one of them.

The story is nice and engaging – it’s a story of a woman in her mid-thirties I’d say who is reasonably successful in her job in a clothes production company. A story that could probably describe the lives of most of us. But the story isn’t what’s the most important here. It’s the feelings and emotions that accompany it in every step of the way. That different point of view, the honesty of opinions and the strength to talk about things that are not always considered “normal” in public terms make it a distinctively nice read when compared to other books of that type (I mean women literature – though this term sounds a bit demeaning for this book).

I love books that you just can’t put away and that you reach for with a great sense of pleasure and excitement and this is definitely one of them. The only downside of it is that it ends and I am now worried the next book I read won’t be as exciting…

My rating: YYYYY

Olga Tokarczuk: Pull Your Plough through the Bones of the Dead (Prowadz Swoj Plug Przez Kosci Umarlych)

For those who don’t know Olga, she’s a renowned Polish writer with her books translated to many languages, including English. She is a recipient of the most important Polish book prize – Nike.

Her latest book is about Janina Duszejko, an old lady living in a remote house at the Polish – Czech border. She would seem average – teaching kids English in the local school and looking after the local summer houses outside the season – if it wasn’t for her unique hobby. Janina feels passionate about two things – animals and astrology. In her opinion you can tell everyone’s future from the stars which she likes communicating to people around. To say the least, this doesn’t really make her many friends around, she’s rather considered to be a bit of an old weirdo. As she is a bit of a loner and leaves far away from what we would normally call a civilization, she also finds special interest in animals – dogs, deer, foxes, wolves – all live that surrounds her.

There is a crime in the book too – a series of mysterious murders that occur in this small village one after the other with all the clues leading to a conclusion that it is the animals that are taking revenge on people.

Janina is a bit too eccentric and a bit too passionate about what she thinks is right. And if you read this book assuming that was intentional it will bring an ironic smile on your face and let you enjoy her continuous monologues. If you take her seriously however, and this may actually be the way the author intended, then this character just seems a bit fake to me, with her looking at the world through astrology and putting animals above people and her feeling of being someone better than anyone else around her. If we do assume that it is indeed an ironic picture of such a person than this book is a pleasure to read – it’s quite slow paced but that’s not necessarily a negative in this case. The language is beautiful and the story is actually involving. And the ending is the icing on the cake.

But (there’s always a but), looking back at the pictures this book created in my imagination, despite the crime and the blood this book seems pretty colourless to me. I don’t know whether it’s because it’s winter when most of the action takes place or whether it’s just because that’s what life is like, it just left a dark, dull recollection in my memory of the place and people described in the book.

I did enjoy this book but I still wouldn’t say I am a fan of Tokarczuk. I liked the House of Day, House of Night by her the most so far and it is available in English so I recommend it. This one though less so, unless you read her previous books and know what to expect.

My rating: YYYYY

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

Maria Nurowska: Sprawa Niny S. (Nina S. Case)

This new Nurowska's book was a great come back to Polish literature for me. The book centralises around the murder of Jerzy Baran, middle aged solicitor whose body is found in his office in Warsaw with five bullets in his chest. The suspects are Nina S., a well known book writer and Jerzy's ex-partner and her two twin grown-up daughters. And so the interrogation begins. The officer investigating the case goes through sessions of evidence gathering with Nina's daughters which gives us a detail picture of the family history and events that lead to Nina's relationship with Jerzy. He also goes through Nina's personal diary and learns about Nina's childhood, relationship with the twin daughters' father, twins' childhood, their life experiences and relationships... Nina's relationship with Jerzy did not end well - she gave up everything for him - her money, the family old residence, her time, her career, her feelings. And he took it all and then left her with no remorse. All the facts make the officer deduct that Nina is the person who has most reasons to commit this murder. But as the investigation goes on the less he believes she did it.

Even though the book spins around the case it really is a book about women. About their first relationships with men and how they impact the next ones, the relationships between mothers and their children, the emotions and feelings that accompany them, the tough times to write and publish books in the post-communist Poland. All these reflect a lot of Nurowska's life herself, there are plenty of autobiographical plots in this book. Nurowska spent nine years in a relationship with her Jerzy Baran who left her heart-broken and unwilling to do anything else in her life. Given all this I suppose killing Mr Baran in this book is her revenge. She also knows first hand what it was like to publish books in Poland in the 1990s and in interviews she often says she had more recognition in Germany then in her motherland. Her books have been translated to German, French and Czech, not to English, which is a shame as this book as well as some of her earlier ones are really worth reading. Here is a very recent interview with her (in Polish).

One of the characters says in the book: "It's not the facts that kill us, it's the meaning we assign to them". And then after such a statement we are faced with all the tragic love relationships of Nina and her daughters, the love that almost killed Nina (and Nurowska) and all you can say to that is "easier said than done". But it's good to see hope in Nurowska's life - she's now busy building her own bed & breakfast in Zakopane, surrounded by friends she trusts. And you know there's hope for Nina too.

I really liked this book, I like Nurowska's narration style and I'm looking forward to going home for Christmas and getting some more of her books!

And I also wonder why it is so much more difficult for me to write about a Polish book in English...?

My rating: YYYYY