Review by Booklist Review
In the newest book from Nobel Prize--winning author Tokarczuk (The Empusium, 2024), the narrator and her husband R. move into a strange house (it has an underground river that moves through the basement) in a remote area, Silesia, that was reapportioned to Poland after WWII by order of the Allied forces. Their old, wispy-haired, wig-making neighbor Marta tells them stories of their town, including tales of men with birds in them, of a nun whose commitment to God took on the boldness of an Angela Carter fairy tale, of families rich and poor whose houses have nestled into the landscape. Like Tokarczuk's novel Flights (2018), it's a constellation novel that brings together bits and baubles, legends and small-town tall tales, combining them into one poetic, rich work of art that ebbs and flows like a stream. Moments of absurdity--an international incident happens when a man dies on the border, and Czech and Polish soldiers spend a week moving him to the other side of the line to avoid having to deal with it--mix in with moments of rich emotion, all topped with a swirl of folklore-like magic. A treat for fans of Tokarczuk and literary fiction.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
This vivid 1998 novel from Nobel winner Tokarczuk prefigures the discursive style of her later work such as Flights, with the story of a woman who moves with her husband from their Polish city to rural Silesia. There, the unnamed narrator posts an ad in the local paper about her interest in collecting people's dreams. Krysia, a senior employee at a nearby bank, dreams of hearing a voice in one ear, which feels like it's "making the whole world vibrate." Aging wigmaker Marta is mum about her own dreams but claims she can know other people's dreams just by looking at them. The narrator also takes an interest in Saint Kummernis, a 14th-century folk saint who saved a group of children sickened by poisonous mushrooms. Meanwhile, the narrator is unsettled by the monstrous, undying wolves who stalk the landscape at night, while her husband begins detecting a strange smell only he can perceive following a car accident. Mushrooms figure prominently in the episodic narrative, as the narrator eats so many that she dreams of becoming one. What emerges from this cornucopia of curiosities is a rich and pulsating view into life itself, which the narrator views as "beautiful despite the terrible things other people say about it." It's a marvel. Agent: Laurence Laluyaux, RCW Literary. (Dec.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Set in Silesia in southwest Poland on the Czech border, this novel from Nobel Prize-winning Tokarczuk (Mr. Distinctive) consists of linked stories, essays, and vignettes. After being occupied by Germany during World War II, Silesia was resettled by Poles from eastern Poland, which the USSR had annexed. The novel's narrator and her husband join the wave of Poles moving to small villages in Silesia, acquiring a house formerly owned by Germans. As she adapts to her new home, the narrator experiences the region via its flora and fauna (including poisonous mushrooms for which she shares recipes) and via the stories of her neighbors. Next door is an older woman named Marta, a wigmaker who is the source of much folk wisdom. There's also So-and-So, who drunkenly roams the neighborhood with his chainsaw, offering to cut down trees; Marek Marek, a suicidal man convinced he shares his body with a bird; and a man who dies on the Polish-Czech border, causing an international incident. Through these stories, Tokarczuk captures the intersection of history, war, survival, religion, philosophy, dreams, and the land. VERDICT Written in 1998 and first published in English in 2003, this reissued novel is representative of Tokarczuk's "constellation novels," in which scattered fragments are beautifully tied together to form a unified whole.--Jacqueline Snider
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A woman moves to a small Polish village that seems to contain the entire world within it. If the unnamed narrator of Tokarczuk's latest novel appears to bear certain similarities to Tokarczuk herself--an abiding interest in mushrooms and astrology, say--that's neither here nor there. The novel is set in a remote Polish village close to the Czech border: so close to the border, in fact, that when a visiting German tourist suddenly dies, border guards from both countries take turns moving the man's body back and forth to avoid dealing with the paperwork. As in the tour de forceFlights (2018), Tokarczuk favors a storytelling style that more closely resembles a constellation--horizontal, spread-out, continually growing--over a single plotline. One chapter follows the life of a woman saint who was crucified by her father after suddenly growing a beard; others, the life of the monk who recorded the saint's biography and couldn't help feeling he'd been born into the wrong body. These chapters alternate with more mundane, domestic ones in which the narrator exchanges visits with her neighbor, Marta, or the other villagers go about their lives. And while at first there might appear to be little connection between the various narratives, gradually, and then more and more quickly, the connections accrue. One character is driven mad by the sudden realization that a planet he'd never known to exist had existed all along: "If you aren't aware of something, does that mean it doesn't exist?" he wonders. "If a person becomes aware of something, does that knowledge change him?" As a whole, the book is at once simpler and, at the same time, infinitely more complex than it at first appears. An exquisitely constructed, mercurial gem from the Nobel prizewinner. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
