As the teacher of a course that deals, in part, with the rhythm and movement of prose, I was already intrigued in the first couple of pages of this small novel by just how inviting and engaging its prose was. By its third page, I'd stopped reading to investigate who might have done such a splendid job of translating the young Polish author's original into English.
Well, NOBODY did! He did it himself, right from the get-go; he wrote it in English - which just happens to be his own FIFTH language!! (Now, how does that work exactly? How can it even be the case?) The English prose is not competent, not adequate, not merely good - it's beautiful: there's not a poor or dull sentence in it anywhere - and I've read it twice.
The story itself is a gut-punch, and a hard one at that. The novel has 4-5 pages of blissful happiness when two young, very poor gay guys find themselves in each other and go camping. The rest of the book is about their trying to find ways just to survive and be themselves in those last wretched years of the Soviet control of Poland. Because the story itself is so convincing and the language's rhythm and flow so engaging, there's no partial investment in this story; if you're there with them at all, you're there 100% - which makes the experience of reading it better and the realities it depicts worse. READER: be advised!
I consider the book something of a minor miracle. I don't know that it's "perfect" (whatever that might mean, exactly), but it's so good that what I feel most towards it (and its author) is gratitude. Of the many good things art can do for us, reminding us that there's still more possible than we'd imagined is, for me, the best one. The author said in an interview that he'd taught himself English because, while he didn't "need" it at the time, he wanted to have it as his 'special' language, one he could escape to - and in.
All I can say to that is how very glad I am that he's not keeping it for himself anymore!
FT
R. M. Ettinger
Sean Kelley
Blue in Washington (Barry Ballow)