Stone Upon Stone

Starred review from October 4, 2010
Like a more agrarian Beckett, a less gothic Faulkner, a slightly warmer Laxness, Mysliwski masterfully renders in Johnston's gorgeous translation (Mysliwski's first into English) life in a Polish farming village before and after WWII through the eyes of Szymus Pietruszka, a seven-times–wounded member of the Polish resistance and a fun-loving, hard-drinking dandy in mourning over the long-lost peace of prewar village life. Having recently returned to the farm from a lengthy hospitalization following an accident that mangled his legs, Szymus sifts through memories of his family—dead mother and father, three brothers—and the many girls he has known, plans a family tomb, and struggles to preserve the land in the face of rapid change. Richly textured and wonderfully evocative, the novel renders Szymus as a distinctly memorable character, whose humor and hard-earned wisdom lend beauty to a bleak vision of a land destroyed by war and ravaged by history, and whose voice—sometimes warm, sometimes ornery, always elegiac—is undeniably original, his digressions and ruminations forming a story that reminds us that "words are a great grace. When it comes down to it, what are you given other than words?"

Starred review from November 15, 2010

Epic novel of rural Poland from two-time Nike Prize winner Mysliwski (The Palace, 1991, etc.).

A nonstop river of narration limns the long, eventful life of Szymek Pietruszka. In his wild youth before World War II, all Szymek wanted to do was drink, dance, fight and sleep with all the girls. After the Nazis invaded Poland, he joined the Resistance; following the war he nonchalantly held down various jobs in town: police officer, haircutter, civil servant. Yet in the end he returned to the small family farm, immersing himself in the rhythms of planting and harvest that ordered his father's life. Two of his brothers had moved to the city; a third, Michal, was swept up in the communist revolution, but came home a shattered man who never speaks and must be cared for by Szymek. Not so easy, since Szymek's legs were badly damaged when he was struck by a car while taking his horse-drawn wagon loaded with sheaves across the new paved road that divides his village. The world is moving on, warns the party functionary who refuses to approve his request for cement to build a tomb (that's not on the list of approved uses): "You can't live with a peasant soul any more." But the flow of salty, earthy talk from Szymek, his family and fellow villagers suggests that peasant ways will survive even the invasion of tourists looking to sample "traditional" culture without actually experiencing the boredom of tilling a field or milking a cow. Cognizant of the brutal realities that govern people tied to the land in a close-knit, quarrelsome community, Mysliwski reminds us of the pleasures inherent in such illusion-free existences. "You have to live," says the storekeeper who cheerfully beds down with Szymek (or any other man who strikes her fancy). "What else is there that's better?"

Joyously anchored in the physical world, steeped in storytelling, a delight from start to finish.

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