A Geography of Reading

"It is by reading novels, stories, and myths that we come to understand the world in which we live." -Orhan Pamuk

The Lullaby of Polish Girls by Dagmara Dominczyk

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dagmara dominczyk the lullaby of polish girls

I can’t remember where I first heard of The Lullaby of Polish Girls by Dagmara Dominczyk a mere two days after it was released, but I know the very next thing I did was add the book to my Goodreads. Within a week I had purchased a hardback copy from Elliott Bay Books. I regret none of that. What I do regret is letting the book linger on my shelves for five months before reading it. I thought it would be an easy read, maybe a little pop-y and I was never quite in the mood. My mistake. The book was fantastic and I’m so glad I threw it in my suitcase for my anniversary getaway this past weekend.

First, a Little Background

I’m a sucker for all things Polish. I spent a year there on foreign exchange in this wondrous time (1994-5) when the country was emerging from Communism and hadn’t yet found its feet as part of Western Europe. I was so enthralled with the people, the culture, and the history that 10 years later I started drafting a novel about the place to try and grasp in fictional form some of the complexities of the place and people I loved.

As I’ve been querying agents for my novel, I’ve been seeking out books about Poland during that transitional period to 1) see if I got it right, 2) find out what agents and presses are interested in the period, and 3) recapture some of the magic. So I was predisposed to like The Lullaby of Polish Girls, even if it hadn’t been really well written.

A Book in Context

Minutes before I opened The Lullaby of Polish Girls and started reading it, I read the final pages of Far from the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy. It was a strangely apt transition, because I’d been really interested in Bathsheba Everdene’s unusual strength of character for a literary woman of her period. At least in the beginning. Then she got kind of wimpy and I started seeing so many of the gender limitations of the era. I was getting really depressed, actually, despite the fact that I was away on vacation and reading in a spot overlooking the sea.

About The Lullaby of Polish Girls

How wonderfully refreshing, then, to open Dominczyk’s book and find not one but three strong female leads. And they weren’t cardboard strong or representing some idealized female power. Instead, Anna, Kamila, and Justyna are beautifully round characters. All three are Polish by birth, although Anna has emigrated to America, and their mothers knew each other before the girls were born. Anna first meets Justyna when she returns to Poland for a few brief moments as a tween in 1989. Justyna tells Kamila (who had been away that weekend) about Anna and Kamila takes up a deeply personal correspondence with her.

Describing an Era

So what we get to see as readers is the lives of these women in 2002 and then fully-realized flashbacks of them as they are growing up in 1989, 1992, 1995, and 1998. It’s a simple setup. Each chapter has a section focused on Anna, then one on Kamila, and a third on Justyna. The chapters alternate between the present (2002) and an ordered sequence of years in the past. But what’s happening behind that simplicity is these girls are growing up and changing as rapidly as their country is. When Anna visits in 1989, Poland is still in the last stages of Communist rule. By the time the narrative ends, Poland is two short years away from joining the European Union. That’s a whirlwind of history and it all happens in 217 pages. But Dominczyk lets this exist as rich background rather than thrusting the history on the reader.

Intercultural Identities

Dominczyk is also using her characters to describe the myriad stages of exile of the Polish people and the longing that produces. Anna’s father is a refugee from the Communist government. She was seven when her family came to the US to live the American Dream. Kamila’s parents came to the US after the Berlin Wall fell and are in the country illegally. When we first meet her in 2002, Kamila is visiting her parents as she flees from a bad marriage in Poland. Justyna and her family have always been in Poland. It’s remarkable that three families can showcase such a wide variety of experiences and it never comes off at all forced. There are some really gorgeous complexities that arise in the girls’ interactions because of their degrees of escape from Poland and it’s so well handled.

I’ve seen these experiences up close and Dominczyk gets them just right. When I was in Poland, I remember people telling me about an aunt or a cousin who had gone to the US as though I might have met them. They’d talk wistfully of America like it was the promised land. And a Polish friend I had in the US saved every year so she could go back and visit that part of her past and her family. She knew that people expected something from her because she was American–gifts or hope or a way out–and I think that always reminded her of what she had in the States. Meanwhile, as an American, I would have gladly stayed in Poland if I hadn’t been 17.

Strong Female Characters

But what I liked most about this book was the strength of those three women. Even as girls they are sharply aware (of each other when not of themselves) and they make mistakes and choices and life happens to them, but they are strong in their very core. The image I came away from Poland with was of an entire sex who was genetically blessed, good at all things home-related, and making their way in the workforce as scientists and economists. It’s a broad generalization, of course, but this book captures some of that “we’ll forge ahead no matter what” spirit that I so admired.

I haven’t been back to Poland. Maybe because it’s not in my blood I’m afraid that I won’t relate to the place after so many years. But I was grateful to Domiczyk for allowing me to revisit and broaden my memories. And I was grateful that she created this rich, tightly-written story. I’ll re-read this book with pleasure and not just as a vacation read.

If you want to visit a little piece of the Polish-American experience, pick up a copy of The Lullaby of Polish Girls from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

A Tale of Two Worldviews: Alice McDermott vs. Tim O’Brien

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Sometimes what makes you love or hate a book isn’t the characterization. It’s not the plotting or the setting or the quality of the writing. Sometimes what you love or hate about a book just comes down to the message. That’s what I realized when I read July, July by back to back with Charming Billy by this weekend.

Tim O’Brien

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ll know by now that I love Tim O’Brien. In fact, reviewing Going After Cacciato showed me that if I looked hard enough, literary language was all around me. So when I bought July, July, I knew it wouldn’t sit for long on my too-read shelf. I knew he was going to be playing with time and a myriad of characters and I couldn’t wait to see what he did.

I hated it.

Don’t get me wrong, the book is very well written. The characters are interesting, O’Brien plays with the edges of magical realism, and he does this thing with interspersion of space in the last few pages that blew my mind. But it was a miracle that I made it to the end of the book, because from the very beginning I just wanted out of the miserable lives of the characters as they sat at their college reunion rehashing all the horrible things that ever happened to them and all the horrible things they ever did to each other.

I realized that what the book jacket described as “a portrait of a generation launched into adulthood at the moment when their country, too, lost its innocence” was maybe too good of a portrait. And I wasn’t sure that most of them were adults. They were selfish, damaged, and childish. I recognized some of their behaviors as my own and it terrified me. The book made me want to hug my husband. Forever. And maybe not leave the house again.

I read the book in one night because I do adore O’Brien and I was looking for some redemption (for the characters, for me). But when I read that last period, I knew I was going to need to get out of bed and fetch myself a palate cleanser.

Alice McDermott

By contrast, Charming Billy by Alice McDermott has sat on my shelf for I don’t know how long. The sticker on the front says the used store bought this copy in 2000 and I could have been shifting it around since then. But it was just what I needed Saturday night after closing July, July. I know it was just what I needed because I fell asleep twelve pages in. My brain had finally found a place where it no longer felt assaulted and I could relax.

That does not mean the book was boring. Nor was it especially uplifting. The book actually starts in a bar following a funeral as neighbors pass around gossip about the deceased (Billy) and his widow sits almost entirely offstage. I did not know what to expect. What I found, though, was this tightly-knit world of several generations of Irish-Americans. Their lives are not idyllic and many of them are alcoholics. But they love each other and they act in each others’ best interest. The book shifts back and forth in time–covering more than half a century–and I fell so hard for these people.

The writing is good and sometimes quite pretty, but it was McDermott’s spirit that captured me.

The Quest for Happiness

“Billy didn’t need someone to pour him his drinks, he needed someone to tell him that living isn’t poetry. It isn’t prayer. To tell him and convince him. And none of us could do it, Danny, because every one of us thought that as long as Billy believed it was, as long as he kept himself believing it, then maybe it could still be true.” – Alice McDermott

My generation is really busy right now trying to figure out what’s going to make our lives happy. We’ve been told we can be anything, except there aren’t really all that many jobs. We’ve been told we are special, except that few people want to pay us to be special. In contrast, when Billy’s cousin and best friend, Dennis, comes of working age in 1937, his father gets him a job at Con Edison because “The greatest city in the world will always need electricity.” This is a man who knows that having enough money to feed your family is happiness. There aren’t a lot of strivers in this book and I found that refreshing, especially after reading July, July where the strivers were the unhappiest of the lot. As I think back on it, maybe both books were telling me the same thing, but the positive example was a lot easier to listen to.

Maybe it’s a generational thing–the Greatest Generation vs. the Baby Boomers. All I know is some of the brightest minds of my generation are either setting up jobs completely on their own terms or they are walking away entirely. They are working part time or using their Ivy League educations to set up farms and grow enough food to feed their families.

Ain’t Capitalism Grand?

The other thing I watch in my everyday life is how we all talk about the economy, waiting for it to get better. And we’re told the best thing we can do to make it better–the best thing we can do to create jobs for those who don’t have them–is to buy more and save less. We have to put our money to use. We have to want more things.

I don’t know about you, but my house is full. I have so many things I can’t even give them all away. And not a one of them makes me happy. I understand that capitalism is built on growth and that growth is built on consumption, but it feels like all of that rests on a bubble of rapidly-cooling air. I can’t buy a better coat that will last longer because it might put someone out of a job. I can’t buy coffee in bulk bags because those horrible, single-use plastic cups require more manufacturing and cost more money so they equal prosperity (and then even the man at the landfill has a guaranteed income). Oh, and I have to do it all on credit because my income won’t go up until I stimulate the economy.

In Charming Billy, when Dennis asks his step father (Mr. Holtzman) for a loan so that Billy can send for his bride from the old company, he says, “You boys will never have any money if you spend everything you make before it’s earned.” Imagine if the government worked that way. Imagine if we were talking about paying down the deficit instead of raising the debt ceiling. On a good day the best we can muster is balancing a budget so we don’t add to the debt.

A Life Less Ordinary

I thought of Mr. Holtzman today when the repair bill for my car started to approach the car’s actual Blue Book value. As my husband and I discussed the worth of the vehicle, the life still left in it, and whether we should replace it, I was proud that we sounded more like Holtzman than John Boehner. I was glad that my husband agreed the car is worth repairing. I was grateful that it is, unlike so many of our electronics these days, still somewhat cost-effective to repair.

I know that if we all walk away from the malls and refuse to buy the latest iPhone our way of life will change. Our GDP will shrink. The stock market will lose value. People might well lose jobs. But that last one is the only one I worry about because none of these objects I’m supposed to want make me happy.

What does make me happy is to come home every night and snuggle with my husband. Our jeans might be a little ratty. We make coffee in a cheap French press that only gets replaced when I shatter the carafe. And we’re repairing our nine-year-old car like a couple of old fogeys. And maybe that means I’m not ambitious enough, but I don’t care. I don’t care because it makes me feel like an adult to take care of the things I have instead of throwing out something that isn’t perfect. I don’t care because I share my life with friends new and old and not a one of us gives a rip about what material goods the others possess.

I could go into how the impulse to toss out things that aren’t working relates to divorce rates, but you can make that inference on your own. I just know that if I treated my writing like we are taught to treat our material objects and each other, I’d have a waste basket full of shitty first drafts and very little personal development (and very few final products) to show for it all.

So the gift I received this weekend from two very talented authors is the inspiration to dig deep and think about my values. What books challenge you? Do you feel the tide changing like I do or do you think I’m full of it? Please share your thoughts in the comments.

If this review made you want to read either book, pick up a copy of Charming Billy or July, July from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Uprooted by Mauricio Segura’s Eucalyptus

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Imagine a woman, born in the US but who lived for a formative year in Pinochet’s Chile, reading a book by an author born in Chile and living in Canada. The book, originally written in French, is about a Chilean-Canadian man who has returned to his native country to bury his father. Perhaps this international hopscotch begins to describe the magic I felt when opening Eucalyptus by . I’m so far inside it, I can’t even tell. Let me share with you what I loved about this beautiful book.

Literary Language

Segura captured me with the first sentence of the first paragraph: “On the horizon, pools of water vaporized as he advanced.” Writers and writing teachers make a lot of (deserved) fuss about first sentences–so much so that it can be paralyzing for a writer to try and come up with something original but not forced, interesting but not obscure. With this sentence I had no idea what country the characters were in, who they were, or what they were doing except advancing. And I was happy to advance with them. It quickly becomes obvious that Alberto is driving and he’s doing so very determinedly.

“He only came to himself when the pickup crossed the old metal bridge over the Bío Bío, where there was a gaggle of children giddy with laughter bobbing along in the river’s treacherous current.” – Mauricio Segura

This is the first mention of geography and it felled me and grounded me. I remembered driving with my own family across that same river one night to see Halley’s Comet. I remembered the children playing in the river. But even if I didn’t have those memories, this simple sentence begins to open for the reader the world that Alberto is re-entering. The children are gleeful despite the danger. Reading further the parents are watching but not very closely. This is not a world where children live on leashes and Alberto will learn some lessons along the way.

My brother, one of the most faithful readers of this blog, will be interested to know that the story takes place in Temuco. It is on the sidewalks of that town that I remember him earning the nickname “Terremoto” which means earthquake. I’ll spare his dignity a little and not commit to the Internet the other story about him in Temuco. Just know, Tosh, that I haven’t forgotten and I’m using my rights as an older sister to tease you about it for life.

“Yes, it is now that the family is breaking up, decomposing like molecules being brought to the boil, and we are scattering to the four corners of the American continent.” – Mauricio Segura

And then there are the images. This is a simple one–much of the language in this book is simple–but it’s deceptive in its plainness. In one sentence we have a family that is rotting, separating, heating up, and dispersing. In a book of only 150 pages, each word has a lot of work to do and Segura (along with translator Donald Winkler) is doing it well.

Parallels

This is a book to read closely. The story of Alberto returning from Canada for his father’s funeral is closely woven into the story of Roberto (Alberto’s father) returning from Canada for his father’s funeral. You read that right. I wondered if Alberto’s son, Marco, would someday also return…

“‘A few weeks later,’ Carmen said, ‘a policeman came to the farm.’

Opening the door, Roberto saw a youth dressed in a khaki shirt and brown pants.” – Mauricio Segura

What’s especially interesting about this relationship between parallel time periods is that there are often no transitions between them. Carmen is telling the story to Alberto after the death of Roberto but the paragraphs of time just slip into each other. It makes the book a little difficult to follow at times but it also causes this gorgeous overlap where all events feel as though they are occurring in the present. It’s a difficult effect (between that and the bouncing bus, I did a fair amount of re-reading) and not one I’d use lightly but Segura pulls it off.

Foreign Roots

I was attracted to this book first because of the title. The smell of eucalyptus trees can still take me back to long walks up Caracol Hill where I picnicked with my family beneath those fragrant trees. That scent is such a strong part of my memory that when visiting San Francisco I make a beeline for Lafayette Park to be surrounded by it.

What surprised me about this book was finding out that eucalyptus trees are indigenous to Australia, not Chile, and were as much imports to that land as I was. I liked thinking about all the degrees of native heritage that the characters enjoyed from the very native Mapuche people to Marco, a child whose father and grandfather had both bounced back and forth across the continent.

Speaking of the continent, did you catch that moment in the second pull quote on this page where Segura wrote of the “American continent”? When I first learned about the continents as a student in Chile, I memorized the names of all six of them. Imagine my surprise and confusion when I came home to the US where I was then taught that there are seven continents. Amazing how a simple denotation on a map can change your worldview.

Rich Storylines

I’ve already discussed parts of Alberto and Roberto’s stories, but there is a lot more background packed into this book including allusions to the troubled political history of Chile, evolving relationships with indigenous peoples, and a volcano. On top of that are some deeply complicated family and neighborhood relationships. But somehow the book is not at all crowded. In fact, at times there was so much going on at an almost subliminal level that Segura left me questioning whether I had any talent as a writer at all because he was weaving those storytelling threads so well. The best books leave us something to aspire to.

If you want to explore a little piece of Chile, pick up a copy of Eucalyptus from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Ruminating on the Supernatural with The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton

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This time of year I always start to crave ghost stories and caramels, so when I found The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton sitting on my to-read shelf one night, I knew the time was finally right to read it. I’ve always liked , and although these stories speak to the genteel turn-of-the-century world I came to love so much in The House of Mirth, they were not at all the October scares I expected. Instead they got me thinking about my own relationship with the supernatural.

A Spook-Filled Childhood

When I was a very little girl my aunt told me stories of La Llorona–of her imprisonment by her jealous husband and how she wandered the deserts of New Mexico wailing. I know this story varies, but that is the version that will always be true for me. As she told me this story, I snuck peeks at the blackness of a nearby closet and pictured her presence there. I still have a thing about closets.

Whether it was that story or some other inspiration, ghost stories are the first books I remember choosing for myself. Something about the thrill of the scare combined with insight into another plane of existence held me rapt and kept me coming back for more. I was raised without religion and I think in some ways I invested my sense of spirituality in the supernatural. As I grew older I started reading about more real horrors like the Holocaust and other mass murders, but ghost stories and the supernatural continued to interest me.

And then there was the ghost. When I played in our basement I often thought I heard my mother calling me. I’d run to the stairs to answer but she always said she hadn’t called. I didn’t think anything of it until one day I saw a woman in the doorway of a long, spooky hallway we had. It’s difficult to describe what she looked like but she wasn’t a solid form or detailed. All I remember is her long, brown hair and her yellow, flowered dress. I feel like I saw her twice. I think I was afraid when I saw her, but I don’t remember screaming.

I was obsessed with the paranormal for years. I read all the books and wished I had ESP. I played with a Ouija board and candles. I recited Bloody Mary into bathroom mirrors so many times that I still can’t look in the mirror after watching a scary movie.

Losing My Taste for Scares

I loved scary stories and movies well into my twenties. I may or may not be watching The Others right now as I type. But somewhere in the past few years the scares have touched a different part of my heart and I am more genuinely afraid of ghosts.

Perhaps this has something to do with a trip my husband and I took to Taos, New Mexico to see the Nicolai Fechin Museum. Some people say that Taos has a hum, that so much evil was committed there over the years and it’s infected the place so deeply you can hear it. I know we felt ill at ease when we drove into town and as we went to the store for supplies, but when we checked into an amazingly large hotel suite at a very cheap price, I think we forgot all of that. But then, sometime late into the night, I woke up and I could feel something in our room. My memory is of a shape standing by the window. Clayton remembers it being on the other side of the room near the closet. I was so scared I couldn’t even move to turn on the lamp. Somehow my husband and I figured out we were both awake and experiencing this same feeling. We got out of bed, hurried down the corridor, and set up camp in the living room with all the lights on. When dawn came, we got the hell out of town. Even today I have difficulty talking about that night and how I felt.

I still enjoy the odd ghost story or movie, but these days I seek out Spanish directors who tend to focus more on the coexistence of ghosts and the living than on movies with big scares.

What About Edith Wharton

What I found so astounding about Wharton’s book is that it isn’t scary. Or at least not mostly. There are people in the stories who are scared of the ghosts, but for the most part the ghosts are a kind of curiosity. They portend death or provide echoes of it, but they don’t jump out of closets or levitate beds. They remind me in some way of the ghosts in Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits. They are a natural part of the life cycle. I like this idea of acceptance and of the layers of time and existence that co-exist.

There are stories that feel unfinished and stories that lack tension, but I still enjoyed this book very much. And as much as I say I’m not up to a good scare anymore, “All Souls'” was both the scariest of the stories and the one I enjoyed the most.

I don’t know if ghosts are real, but I do believe in the continuity of energy. And while I will still be closing my closet tight tonight, I’m also going to see if I can get through The Sixth Sense while my husband’s away and not have to dodge the bathroom mirror afterwards. Session 9 will have to wait until he’s back, though.

If you want to explore the spiritual side of ghost stories, pick up a copy of The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Sailing the World with Guest Boy by Djelloul Marbrook

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I’ve been writing a lot about the unmoored experience of being a third culture kid lately and Guest Boy by Djelloul Marbrook captures the darker side of that experience with the story of Bo Cavalieri, a sailor adrift in the world.

Born of a German mother and an Arabic father he never knew, Bo isn’t even his name. “Bo” is short for “Bosun” which identifies his role aboard a ship, and the fact that Bo is more comfortable being identified by his title than his name says so much about the depth of his identity crisis. At times, the narrative slips into calling him by his birth name, Amir, and I wondered if in the subsequent books he will begin inhabiting that self. I very much enjoyed following Bo on his quest and how well Marbrook laid out the paths available to him: denial, discovery, integration, and erasure. It’s a struggle I could identify with and one I learned from.

“A people, in order to be proud of their past, they must be acquainted with it.” – Djelloul Marbrook

Deconstructing Geography


Like many of my favorite books, this story defies the arbitrary geographical boundaries I’ve placed on this blog. The narrative traveled from Oman to Somalia and Edinburgh to Algeria and New York. It took me through unfamiliar histories of Arab, Portuguese, and Greek sailors. At times I wanted the book to be full of hyperlinks so I could dig deeper into those histories–to learn more about the kamal, the ancient pearl trade in the Persian Gulf, and the Antikythera computer–but I was glad, too, to stay on the page and inside Bo’s world.

“Each cargo carries with it a disposition towards a particular misfortune.” – Djelloul Marbrook

Bo is never at home anywhere and he holds himself closely as he wanders between groups of people as much as he does places on the map. From the Sultan of Oman to Moira Sayre a woman on one of the many ships he crews (who I’m certain was named in honor of Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald), small parts of Bo are revealed as he drifts and draws, drifts and draws. Even when he meets Rose MacQuarrie, the only woman besides his mother who could tell him about the true nature of his father, Bo holds himself closely and instead we learn most about Bo’s mother and father, a Danish count, and Rose herself.

The Language of a Poet and a Seaman

“I stopped and unbuttoned my skirt and swept it off to the side. I had no undies, so I just presented my familiar long-stemmed rusty rose to Count Von Melen in his garden.” – Djelloul Marbrook

Marbrook is also poet which is evident in his fresh imagery, the way he chooses words, and the structure of his sentences. The book is not overly flowery, but there are times that I could feel him crafting the sentence so that I’d have to slow down and pay attention, like when he buries the verb inside a conjunction, “I didn’t need money. I’d not only my father’s…” There’s a softness to this syntax that I loved, even as it made me go back to read and reread the sentence over and over to get the sense of it.

There’s also a looseness to the writing that I wouldn’t believe if it was written by someone else, but Marbrook is so in control of his subject that as he waxes metaphoric about the relationship between chemistry and alchemy, I’m willing to suspend my usual disbelief. And I was willing to trust him implicitly as he described all the parts of a ship and of sailing in what must be a pitch-perfect sailor’s vernacular.

There is not much tension in the novel, but it’s fascinating nonetheless and I was always torn between devouring the book and taking careful notes.

The Role of the Author

“The Sufis say when the student is ready the teacher appears. What blinds us is what we want.” – Djelloul Marbrook

I did wonder at times how closely this story mirrored Marbrook’s own story. He also has an Arabic first name and a European last and his understanding of the subjects at hand was so complete. I’m sure like many authors his fiction does draw in some ways from life, but I found I enjoyed the book most when I allowed myself to let go of my curiosity about the author. It’s something that’s difficult to do in an era where personality seems to triumph and we talk more about Jonathan Franzen’s denigration of Twitter than we do his books, but letting the work speak for itself appeals more to my sensibilities.

It’s the same reason I struggle at times in these reviews. Sharing books comes so naturally. Sharing my struggles with identity and depression does not. But it is in books like this that I seek answers and guidance and I travel my own path to enlightenment and contentment. This book opened a struggle in me but it’s one I cannot yet name. I hope you will accept this review and this writer our their draft states because I wanted to share this book with you before even I fully understood it just as I want to share myself with you even as I learn to understand myself.

On Sequels

This is only the first of three Light Piercing Water books and I’m torn about reading the rest. On one hand, I deeply enjoyed getting to know Bo and learning from his life and his struggles. On another, this story felt complete and I kind of want to float inside of it for awhile before going on to further adventures. I can only hope that the next two installments are as thoughtfully written and meditative as this one is.