A chilling modern fairy tale of post-Communist Poland.
Mlek tells the story of a family haunted by an ominous raven in this debut novel translated from the Polish.
Hanka is troubled, both when she’s awake and when she’s asleep. During the day, she’s abused by her unstable mother, Sabina, who drinks and laments the passing of her youth and beauty. Hanka’s loving father, Janusz, does what he can to shield her from her mother’s fury, but he works long hours. At night, a demanding raven visits Hanka in her dreams and takes her flying with him, but he also forces her to find him food at the risk of her own well-being. When she disobeys the bird, he pecks at her head, drawing blood. Hanka’s waking-life situation deteriorates further when Sabina becomes pregnant and makes it clear she doesn’t want another child (or even the child she already has). She becomes increasingly abusive to Hanka, Janusz, and, later, the new baby, Bartek. She mellows a bit when she finds a new lover, a deliveryman with an apartment where she can escape from her family—that is, until the raven of Hanka’s dreams begins appearing in Sabina’s, expressing quixotic concerns over the baby’s health. When tragedy strikes, it becomes clear that the raven’s powers extend into the real world, and Hanka must decide whether she’s willing to play his game in order to keep herself safe. Mlek’s tale is caustic, bleak, and always seems to take the most disturbing route to remind readers that it’s no children’s fairy tale. The passages concerning the raven are wrought with a terrible, fabulist beauty, and readers will wish there were more of them, particularly in the novel’s first half. The daytime villain, Sabina, is just as fantastic in her own way. In this passage, she beats a relative bloody at the baptism party of little Bartek: “Blood leaked between his fingers as he shielded his face. Sabina threw back her head and laughed….Seeing that some of the guests were getting close, she fled, climbing up a willow and hiding amongst its branches.” In Mlek’s hands, night and day are equally nightmarish.
A chilling modern fairy tale of post-Communist Poland.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-927967-56-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 14, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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