A Long, Long Time Ago and Essentially True by Brigid Pasulka

When I found out that this book existed, I was ecstatic. Like, over the moon excited about it. So excited that even though it doesn't come out until August, as soon as I noticed Amazon had it in stock and was shipping (publishing fun fact: only big, big books like the Harry Potter series and Twilight and shit have hard-and-fast, don't-you-dare-sell-this-one-second-before-midnight-or-you'll-never-have-lunch-in-this-town-again release dates; whether or a not a book gets stocked on, before, or after its scheduled release date is entirely at the discretion of the retailer, and Amazon tends to ship as soon as the books are printed and in stock at the wholesaler--usually 1 to 2 months before the publisher's date) I purchased a copy. I'm an Amazon Prime member, so it took about two seconds for the book to reach me, and I started reading it immediately.

As it turns out, I could've waited.

A Long, Long Time Ago and Essentially True has two central plotlines told in alternating chapters. The first story is concerns the relationship between a beautiful (aren't they all?) young woman named Anielica Hetmańska and her true love, Czesław (pronounced Cheh-swav), also known as the Pigeon, before, during, and after World War II. Anielica, the Pigeon, and their families are górale, highlanders indigenous to the Tatras Mountains in southern Poland--hillbillies, basically. Because of this, Pasulka's treatment of their narrative resembles something closer to a fable than historical fiction. Told in third person, very far removed from the internal lives of the characters, the górale story retains an air of folksiness that defies even the author's attempt to darken it with the horrors of war.

And can I tell you something? I hate that. I really do. It's the reason that no matter how many times I've tried, I cannot get through Jonathan Safran Foer's Everything is Illuminated, which A Long, Long Time Ago and Essentially True seems to be emulating. I've never been the sort of reader who wants a story for the story's sake--I want people. That's what I care about. And the górale portion of this novel gives cardboard cut-outs, a morality play whose lessons are as trite as "true love conquers all" and "don't be anti-Semitic" and "we all sort of suffer, kinda" which, whatever.

Anielica and the Pigeon were terribly boring (this, by the way, is why I'm anonymous) because I didn't know them at all, I just watched them do and experience stuff. The moments that could be hard-hitting are glossed over or vaguely described (Anielica and her sister-in-law Marysia's rape by German soldiers during Nazi occupation is shown as a chaotic tableau from the Pigeon's point of view as he walks in on it in progress--not as an actual event that is being experienced and felt by anyone) or briefly mentioned in passing. I just did not care.

The second story, that of Anielica and the Pigeon's granddaughter Beata (you don't learn her name till the end of the novel, which makes no sense and is annoying), is slightly more interesting. Raised by Anielica after the early death of her mother from cancer and her drunken father's abandonment, Beata has recently moved to Krakow to live with her first cousin once removed (or whatever--geneology isn't my strong suit) Irena and Irena's daughter Magda, who is supposed to be studying to be a lawyer but mostly just fighting with her mother a lot and dating wildly inappropriate men.

Beata misses her now-deceased grandmother, and feels uncomfortable in "the New Poland"--post-communist, pre-EU (I think; it's not entirely clear), and almost completely foreign to her górale sensibilities. Everyone calls her Baba Yaga, which is the name of an ugly witch-like character from Slavic folklore--but don't worry, she's used to it. Beata is a housekeeper/cook/companion for Pani Bożena*, the aging widow of a former official in the Communist government, a bar girl, and a film enthusiast. She doesn't know who she is or what she wants to be doing, and she sort of wanders around Krakow in an uneasy daze most of the time. Somewhere along the line Beata's boyfriend gives her a video camera, which is both something of a deus ex machina, vocationally speaking, and also representative of Beata's function in the story: she's an observer. She's far less judgmental than she probably should be, and she's not exactly interested in the deeper meaning or significance of most of what she witnesses. Shrug.

The problem with having a book with two such disparate narratives, even if they're connected however tenuously (and the connection here is pretty tenuous), is that each story only gets half of the author's--and the reader's--attention, which weakens them. Just Beata's story, with her grandmother's stories throughout, would have been a thin but strong tale, but Beata doesn't seem very connected to her family's history or very invested in her future. So...what does one do with all of this?

This is not to say that A Long, Long Time Ago and Essentially True was not a valuable book to me, but the reasons I liked parts of it are mostly personal in nature--not in a private way, but in a singular way. I'm lucky I'm Polish, because otherwise the surfeit of unexplained aspects of Polish culture and language would have infuriated me. As it is, I probably only recognized about 20% of the Polish words and phrases in the novel, and figured out 50% more in context. I know the story of Baba Yaga and what górale, dupa (ass--as in butt), and Żywiec (a brand of Polish beer) mean. Other references certainly went over my head, which is annoying, but I also felt sort of accomplished, and intend to brag to my grandmother about how the Polish lessons she gave me the summer I lived with her after graduate school really helped me understand parts of this book that would be otherwise inaccessible to me.

I wanted more from Pasulka's novel, and I was ultimately disappointed by it. On the other hand, I'm certain my mother will like it, and plan to send it to her. Not only that, but I appreciate the attempt to tell a story about what Polish people suffered during World War II, even if this one wasn't as balls-to-the-wall as I would've liked (really, the atrocities delivered upon the Poles during WWII were vast and largely unspoken in deference to other, more traditional Holocaust narratives, also horrific). But I liked the glimpse I got of New Poland, and when Pasulka writes another book I will absolutely pick it up. I feel a great fondness for her and her subject, and I look forward to hearing more from her in the future.

*"Pan" and "Pani" are honorific titles for a man and a woman in Poland. So instead of Mr. Smith, it'd be Pan Smith, and Pani Smith for his wife. This, like most Polish customs, colloquialisms and vocabulary, is not explained in the novel.

This entry was posted by OHD, on Friday, August 07, 2009. You can leave your response.