Un frutto acerbo

3.5 a group of interlocking stories, memories or snapshots if you will, of a young girl growing up in a small village in Communist Poland. This is said to be an autobiographical novel, and indeed the story has a haunted, almost hazy atmosphere with some wonderful details. From the time she is young

This was the only book I had on the shelf that qualified for Women in Translation month, so this was the ideal time to catch up with one that I missed when it was longlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International prize. It is a fairly short collection of stories which vividly recreate a childhood spen Leggi tutto

I enjoyed this book of short stories that seem more like vignettes of a rural Polish childhood during the Communist years. The political details are in the background but place Wioletta well. There are some attempts to weave in fables and myths but they were subtle enough that they did not get in th Leggi tutto

Finished this earlier today... a quirky, funny but also cleverly poignant and unnerving coming of age tale in 1980's Poland with little sprinklings of folklore. I liked it very much. More from this author please.

Book 2 from the Man Booker International list for me, and in a way this is what I think of as a typical IFFP/MBI novel: short, almost a novella, with beautiful but straightforward prose, and the main innovation for the English reader being the unfamiliar setting rather than anything in the writing. W Leggi tutto

Quirk can go either way: it can induce a cringe and a roll of the eyes, or it can make you smile and warm to the narrator. Quirk is particularly common in indie and translated books, I find, and while it’s often offputting for me, I loved it here. Greg achieves an impressive balance between grim sub Leggi tutto

Wioletta Greg's writing owes a fair bit to Bruno Schulz… but Schulz's stories are wonderful and so is this: often charming and adorable, yet with dark currents running through it. It's not quite so verbally acrobatic, but still full of enthralling descriptions of the narrator's eccentric family, and Leggi tutto

I was really debating whether to rate this 2.5 stars or 3 stars, but ended up settling for 3 stars because Wioletta Greg's novella Swallowing Mercury is an easy and for the most part entertaining read. I mean, there are some real little gem chapters in here. But overall, this just wasn't what I was

Po "Gugułach" pozostają wrażenia, niezatarte ślady pewnych kolektywnych doświadczeń dzieciństwa i młodzieńczych lat. Wspomnienia nie jednej dziewczynki, ale dziewczynek i chłopców, którzy dzisiaj liczą swoje pierwsze siwe włosy, z nostalgią spoglądają wstecz i w tej prostocie gugułowych smaków i zap Leggi tutto

I really liked the way this book was written (and translated). The author is a poet and that shows in the language used which captivated me all the way through. I think I enjoyed the language more than I enjoyed the story. I say "story", but it is actually a collection of episodes capturing the narra Leggi tutto