Eastern Europe Archives - Page 2 of 7 - A Geography of Reading

The Lullaby of Polish Girls by Dagmara Dominczyk

November 13, 2013 by Isla McKetta, MFA 2 Comments

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.

Exploring Sun Alley with Cecilia Ştefănescu

September 8, 2013 by Isla McKetta, MFA 2 Comments

This week I am surrounded by Romania from a thought-provoking post about what people will do for a better life to a search query for my favorite tea that instead returned an album of Romanian celebration music (in French). It all started in Sun Alley, Cecilia Ştefănescu’s award-winning novel about the intoxication and torment of forbidden love.

From the moment the young Sal first sees Emi joyously cutting apart his friends’ most prized magazines, he is enthralled with her and does everything he can to overcome the friends, parents, and life that try to keep them apart.

Central Mystery

More than a retelling of Romeo and Juliet, though, Sun Alley allows the characters to grow up. In fact, what I enjoyed most about this book was the split in time. Just as we are preparing to find out what happens when Sal and Emi prepare to run away from Sun Alley together, the time period flashes suddenly forward to an adult Sal and Emi. We discover that their attempt to flee was unsuccessful (as seemed inevitable) but we don’t learn why or how until much later.

Instead, Ştefănescu keeps the unfinished quality of their love affair in sharp focus. Though they are married to other people, they again find that they cannot bear to be apart and embark on a long, adulterous affair with all of the usual stakes. I’m not trying to be flip, but it’s obvious that husband, wife, and children cannot keep Sal and Emi apart any more than friends and parents could.

Their childhood separation is alluded to over and over as the chapters flash back and forward in time which creates a delicious tension because although we know they are (somewhat) together now, we are constantly reminded how fragile that relationship is because it has been broken before. The wonderful structure conceals as much as it reveals and I started to think about how our shifting memories betray us over time.

Other Mysteries

“He cringed in terror. He knew quite well what was on that table. It was someone. A human being, a body, a creature.” – Cecilia Ştefănescu

There is a second mystery in this book, that of a dead body young Sal finds in a basement one afternoon. It’s a truly creepy scene and made me think about how children really act versus how we like to think they act. I think this book erred on the side of how they really act, though, and it was a good lesson for me about not being squeamish about letting your characters follow their paths. I’m glad Ştefănescu didn’t take a more restrained approach to Sal’s interaction with the body, but I do wish that the body subplot was a more integrated part of the story throughout. There were echoes of it and the resolution (which I will not spoil for you) is just right, but I lost the trail sometimes as I focused on Sal and Emi’s love affair.

Significant Detail

Details show a reader where to focus. When something is important, a writer will often layer in more and more detail to signal to the reader that it’s time to really examine a scene. In the case of Sun Alley I was lost in the detail for nearly all of the first chapter. There are readers who love having every sense titillated along the way as they enter a world. I usually look for a bit more guidance and this overly detailed beginning left me grasping for understanding.

“He thought a while and then lightly touched the cockroach’s hump with his nail. It stopped, curled up and slowly moved its legs, seemingly begging to be left alive. Sal lifted his finger and sat down on the kerb next to the cockroach.” – Cecilia Ştefănescu

This is a stylistic choice and some very popular books like Atonement use the same approach. On rereading this beginning, I found that Ştefănescu does as good of a job at tying these descriptions to her overall theme as McEwan does (which is to say she does it very well), but it still drives me a little nuts.

Writing True Dialogue

One of my favorite parts of the book is a fight that Sal and Emi have at the end. I won’t quote it for you here because I don’t want to reveal too much, but writing a good, tense dialogue is something I struggle with. Here Ştefănescu lays out two characters who are standing their ground firmly and we as readers can see that there are moments when they are talking about completely different things without realizing it. So there is conflict and tension and possible resolution but the scene is so well written that I can easily believe one might never see what the other is truly saying. That’s an art and a delicate balance and Ştefănescu does it very well.

Although the ethnologist in me hoped that something about this book would come off distinctly Romanian and I’d learn more about Ştefănescu’s country of origin, I was not at all disappointed to find instead a book that will appeal to anyone who has ever experienced the joy and suffering of forbidden love.

If this review made you want to explore Sun Alley, pick up a copy from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Writing Around the Holocaust with Garden, Ashes by Danilo Kiš

August 11, 2013 by Isla McKetta, MFA 2 Comments

I have read a lot of books about the Holocaust. Memoir and fiction, books set in World War II Europe and in the US before and after. But until reading Garden, Ashes by Danilo Kiš, it had never even occurred to me that a book could be written about Yugoslavia during the 1940s without writing directly about the war. This story of a young Catholic boy, Eduard Scham, who loses his Jewish father, Eduard, attempts to focus so directly on the personal that the historical context is nearly absent.

Are All Holocaust Books the Same?

When I said I’ve read a lot of books about the Holocaust, I mean I’ve read so many that I’ve lost count. In my early teens I was so interested to understand the depths of human depravity that I read every Holocaust memoir and novel I could get my hands on. Kids in school called me a Nazi because I carried around a copy of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich for weeks trying to understand the history as well as the personal stories.

But aside from a few snippets of Anya by Susan Fromberg Schaeffer and images of a Jewish girl dying her hair in a barn from a book whose title I can’t even remember, the stories ran together in my mind. Each ghetto was individual. Each child who was saved or died was an individual with a full life of potential. But I could not then (and cannot now process) that many individual horrors. The events are too big. The lives lost too many. The closest I’ve come in recent years was reading Tadeusz Borowski’s This Way for the Gas Ladies and Gentlemen back to back with Fatelessness by Imre Kertesz and letting myself be jarred by the juxtaposition between Borowski’s story of unloading prisoners at Auschwitz and Kertesz’s description of being unloaded.

So no, all Holocaust books are not the same, but I can understand Kiš’s desire to try and tell a different kind of story.

How do You Write Around the Holocaust?

“You can’t play the victim all your life without in the end becoming one.” – Danilo Kiš

My absolute favorite part of Garden, Ashes is the first chapter. Kiš begins his book with a description of summer days and Andi’s mother carrying in a tray of honey and cod-liver oil which he describes as the “amber hues of sunny days, thick concentrates full of intoxicating aromas.” This first passage ends with how the children would on rainy days, “sad and disappointed, hating to get up, we would back under the covers to sleep through a day that had started badly.”

This contrast between sunny and rainy days continues throughout the first chapter and I realized (too late perhaps) that Kiš was building a metaphor. He’s telling a story that ever so subtly illustrates the differences between life before the war and life during the war. When he writes about how Fraulein Weiss could not be killed–not by the Titanic, her suicide attempt, or the numerous carts that had run over her–he is writing about surviving through the worst whether you want it or not.

Then the chapter, yes, this is all in one short chapter, turns toward the last days of summer when the leaves are changing color and Andi’s mother “had a peculiar presentiment about the advent of autumn” that leads them to jump on the last train and then “the dark cloud was upon us and rain began to patter down.” When they return to town, Kiš begins to use military language like the “signs of autumn’s offensive” that surround them. And then his mother announces the death of an unknown uncle and it seems as though the rest is inevitable.

By continuing to use metaphors, Kiš manages to write an entire book about this family and their experiences in the war that hardly ever mentions the war directly. I began to notice moments when he mentioned his mother but not his father. I felt fear and dread every time a train journey was mentioned. When Andi describes how his relatives are leaving, I wonder if they are going into exile or being deported to camps.

Is Kiš Successful?

“The eternity of the world and the worthlessnes of my own life within this enormous passage of time had become obvious, almost palpable.” – Danilo Kiš

I found this book maddening. The metaphors were amazing and the writing was gorgeous. But there were moments I simply wanted to know what was happening. The historical context is there, imprinted in our minds. But still, I wanted the personal details. I looked for direct mentions of the war, of which there are very few, and clung to them like a buoy. I wanted to know how Andi who clearly had a Jewish father avoided being picked up by the Gestapo. I had trouble distinguishing between his father’s emotional absences and his physical ones.

If you are a more careful reader than I am, one who absorbs information over time, Kiš will knock your socks off with Garden, Ashes. I have a feeling the book is rife with metaphors I’ll never uncover. But even with all the context I have on the Holocaust, I needed this book not to tiptoe as much around the topic. I needed to not wonder whether Eduard Scham had survived or not.

I think Kiš really wanted to create a new kind of narrative about the Holocaust, one that was about life and not death. I admire that. I really do. But some things are too big. We do not have to allow ourselves to be crushed by them, but we do have to look at them head on.

If you want to see how to write around traumatic events, pick up a copy of Garden, Ashes from Powell’s Books. Your purchase keeps indie booksellers in business and I receive a commission.

Building a Hybrid Memoir in Mother Departs by Tadeusz Różewicz

July 17, 2013 by Isla McKetta, MFA Leave a Comment

I was offered Barbara Bogoczek’s translation of Mother Departs by Tadeusz Różewicz for review I think because of my interest in Poland and, of late, Polish poetry. But what made me read the book this week was flipping through and seeing that mix of shapes of text on the page that belongs uniquely to hybrid forms. Since reading W.G. Sebald, I’ve been interested in the way writers transcend the boundaries of their genres using hybrid forms and I thought this book might help me experiment with that a bit myself.

What I didn’t realize until reading the introduction is that the book is actually a compilation of Różewicz’s poetry, essays by his mother and brother, and selected family pictures. The result is a wonderfully polyphonic memoir as the voices harmonize to tell a greater story. And although the emphasis is on the family, the narrative is deeply influenced by the fascinating period in Polish history starting before World War I and ending just after the fall of communism.

On Polish Peasantry

At first reading the childhood recollections of Różewicz’s mother, Stefania Różewicz, was somewhat jarring. Her sentences are much shorter than his and her observations more quotidian. But I soon ceased to care about the writing itself because the stories were so interesting and, to me, personal. She was a Polish peasant at the same time that my grandfather’s parents were peasants in nearby Ukraine. As she describes how desperately poor the families were – taking babies to the fields and sending young children abroad to work – I started to imagine for the first time the circumstances my family had lived in and why they likely fled to work in Pennsylvania coal mines. I also thought back to stories my adoptive Polish grandmother (from when I was on foreign exchange in Poland) had told me about her childhood. This book made all of those stories come alive for me.

Stefania Różewicz does a lovely job of immersing the reader in her mode of life. And later in the book when she finally owns a purely decorative vase, the exquisite luxury of that one simple object is enthralling. It made me think about my relationship with material objects and consumption for its own sake.

Selected Poems

The language in Różewicz’s poetry is relatively simple and his imagery isn’t especially evocative. I think without the context of his mother’s narrative, I wouldn’t have found it at all remarkable. But within the context of her story, his poems come alive. Because I was seeing the Różewicz’s story from a myriad of angles, I began to feel like I was a member of Różewicz family.

mother in the photograph
is still young beautiful
smiles slightly

but on the back
I read written
in her hand the words
‘year 1944 cruel to me’

in the year 1944
the Gestapo murdered
my older brother

we concealed his death
from mother
but she saw through us
and concealed it
from us
– Tadeusz Różewicz from “The Photograph”

By focusing on the emotional push-pull of sharing and concealing information surrounding the death of Różewicz’s beloved brother, I saw both the importance of tacit understanding in the family and the depth of love in that silence.

A Mourning Diary

The heart of the book is Różewicz’s “Gliwice Diary” a record of the time he was attending to his dying mother. This section spans just a few months of her decline and yet it conveys the depths of both love and despair he’s experiencing as his mother passes slowly away. Some of the most beautiful moments are watching him try to cope with her impending death by making his art ever better.

“I am at rock bottom. That’s almost funny. There are no rocks here, it would be hard to explain even to somebody close what I mean. I am at rock bottom. Used up rhetorical phrase, says nothing. And still… I know there’s no sense or value to what I’m writing. But I must not scream.” – Tadeusz Różewicz

But there is sense to what he’s writing and this section struck me as a more emotive and poignant version of A Mourning Diary by Roland Barthes. The death of a loved one is something we all hope never to experience, but most likely will. I was glad to see another example of how a writer can turn even the worst of times into art.

Hybrid Forms

“You ought to be writing one single novel or play or one volume of poems all through your life” – Tadeusz Różewicz

The various viewpoints coalesce beautifully in this book. I think if Różewicz hadn’t focused so tightly around his mother, the book would have felt more sprawling. Instead that focus reminded me of Colette’s My Mother’s House. Mother Departs is certainly less whimsical, but it’s no less personal and poignant. And whereas Colette speaks from one viewpoint and completely in prose, Różewicz allows the reader to form his or her own relationship with the entire family. And readers of prose and poetry will find an entry point into this narrative.

If you want to learn more about Różewicz’s family, pick up a copy of Mother Departs from Powell’s. Your purchase supports a wonderful independent bookstore and your faithful reviewer.

Adapting Kafka’s The Trial for the Western Stage

April 28, 2013 by Isla McKetta, MFA 6 Comments

When I read that New Century Theatre Company was staging Kenneth Albers’ adaptation of Franz Kafka’s The Trial in the former INS building, I knew I had to go. When I read The Trial, one of the things I loved most about it was how well it captured the arbitrariness of living in a totalitarian society. Despite having lived under a dictatorship, I’m pretty ensconced in this Western world of choice, and when I read the description of the play, I wondered how well things like the pre-play “processing” we were to undergo would go over with a Western audience.

The Processing

Before the play, we lined up in the hall of the INS building. Loudspeakers repeated and repeated a loop of information about the play and one of the actors told us repeatedly how long the play was and how impossible it would be to get out once we were seated (so we should go to the bathroom now). Despite having been to the bathroom twice, I felt antsy. Other patrons began whispering rumors of what it was going to be like inside. I wondered what the processing would entail. I worried I wouldn’t be seated next to my husband. I thought they might take away the water bottle of the man in front of us.

Once we were admitted to the anteroom, it did seem like we might be separated and I was pretty sure this was the last play my husband would ever see with me. The doors to the theater swung open and three impossibly tall girls with plastic smiles and white lab coats led us inside. Disorientation achieved. The seats were steeply stacked like a series of three jury boxes around a red curtain. They were difficult to enter and I couldn’t see the exit. I was starting to worry about the fire code. Immersed in an inescapable system. The one feeling they didn’t achieve was arbitrariness. My husband and I discussed this at length and wondered if this was to avoid setting the audience against the actors to start. Despite the fact that I do prefer to sit with my husband, we both wished they had pushed it further.

Has the Play Already Begun?

As we sat in uncomfortable chairs waiting for the play to begin, we watched those three girls seat other patrons. One was rigidly polite. Another started out instructive and began getting testy. I liked watching her scold people as they failed to follow her instructions. I also liked how easy it was to make eye contact with patrons in other sections. We were complicit in enjoying the disorientation of those who did not yet understand the system. But we were all victims of the syrupy sweet soundtrack on a short repeat cycle. It was maddeningly effective.

Behind the Red Curtain

A man stands stunned in lamplight. Two men stare at him. He cannot understand that he is being arrested or why. Darragh Kennan is believably confounded as Joseph K. And Alex Matthews and Michael Patten are deliciously obtuse as Willem and Franz. So far, we’re pretty faithful to the book. In fact, the adaptation is relatively faithful throughout with only a few changes of note. Joseph’s three secretaries (Sydney Andrews, Sara Mountjoy-Pope, and Greta Wilson) add a conspiratorial note and a lot of sex appeal to the play. I loved watching them cross their legs and rotate their right feet in unison as they watched Joseph suffer.

Amy Thone as Joseph’s lawyer recalled the best of His Girl Friday’s Rosalind Russell and her incessant motoring around the stage (literally) made it feel like she was wrapping Joseph up in the case for easy delivery. Joseph pings back and forth between the gentle solace offered by Aunt Clara (Marty Mukhalian) and the conspiratorial maliciousness of Frau Brubach (Tonya Andrews) and allows himself to get more deeply entrenched as he is seduced by Leni (Hanna Mootz) and Block (David S. Klein). I especially enjoyed Alexandra Tavares as Titorelli. She delivered doublespeak like Big Brother was really watching. Another favorite was MJ Sieber as the Priest who shows Joseph how he orchestrated his own demise.

Can Kafka be Translated for a Western Theater Audience?

Absolutely. Overall the play was amazing. The use of noir-inspired lighting and the way some action was condensed into dance-like interludes were both brilliant choices by director John Langs. I felt Leni’s part was under-written and the scene with the architect went on a few beats too long. I was glad Albers chose to shift a few of the key roles in the novel to be played by women.

Having lived in Eastern Europe where a smile is a commodity not to be wasted, I was surprised at how smiles (menacing though they were) were used throughout this staging. I wonder if that was to make it more relatable to a Western audience. After I got over my own bias, it worked and that fake-happy was carried through in other ways as well. I expected to feel more connection with the INS building, but in the end, the play was strong enough without it.

The show runs through May 5. It’s sold out, but if you show up for the waiting list, you have a decent chance of getting in. Try it. The play lends a whole new angle to Kafkaesque.