Selected reviews, essays and notes about literature. This section follows the structure of the Polish version, but contains only selected texts.
New notes will appear here.
My Brilliant Friend is an ordinary and utterly mediocre book. And although it comes recommended on the cover by Jonathan Franzen himself, there is an abyss between these two writers in terms of literary craft — they simply aren’t in the same league.
This book is a narrative tragedy. It sprawls chaotically in every direction. The authors completely lose control of the material they have gathered and are trying to present.
A humorous and erudite journey into an eighteenth-century world, a masterpiece of Polish translation and a gateway to the culture of earlier ages.
A comparative essay on Carson McCullers, Flannery O’Connor and Marilynne Robinson — three visions of solitude, religion and strangeness in provincial America.
A grotesque Southern Gothic novel filled with religious obsession, violence and powerful sentences, but more peculiar than moving and stranger than truly profound.
A compact and intense story of loneliness, desire and the painful asymmetry of love in a grotesque small-town world.
A spiritual testament shaped from an uneventful life, but lacking the tension, mystery and intellectual energy needed to make that life truly compelling.
A superbly reconstructed historical background, but no compelling story, psychological depth or living central character.