Review by Library Journal Review
Best known for his novels (Ferdydurke) and plays (Princess Ivona), Gombrowicz (1904-69) was also a deft short story writer. This collection was first published in his native Poland in 1957 and appears here in English for the first time. The stories are at once humorous, surreal, and absurd. In "A Premeditated Crime," the narrator discovers the head of household dead and with no physical evidence decides that the death was murder and pushes the family to a startling breaking point. "Dinner at Countess Parahoke's" recounts one of the countess's vegetarian suppers, where the cauliflower may not be what it seems. In "Philidor's Child Within," two academic adversaries carry their studies too far when their duel leads to the death of one's wife and the other's lover. A town bully is captured and tortured with a rat for over a decade in "A Rat." The characters and plots are unsettling enough to make it difficult to shake the stories off after reading them; however, their pacing and dated topics make large public demand unlikely. Recommended for academic collections.-Heather Wright, ASRC Aerospace Corp., Cincinnati (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Conformity and logical coherence are rudely deranged in a dozen early tales from Poland's urbane misanthrope (1904-69). As in Gombrowicz's airily bizarre novels (Ferdydurke, Cosmos, Pornografia, etc.), lucid, concise narratives are weighted with outrageous premises and absurd developments that recall the work of Kafka, Beckett, Bruno Schulz, and (especially) Ionesco. Everything challenges the reader's expectations. A peevish recluse becomes the infatuated stalker of a stranger who reproves his boorishness ("Lawyer Kraykowski's Daner"). The son of a Gentile father and Jewish mother experiences "moral ruination" as a consequence of his parents' incompatibility ("The Memoirs of Stefan Czarniecki"). An aging civil servant courts unlovely housemaids, protesting his life of stifling respectability ("On the Kitchen Steps"). Ministers rebel inefficiently against a willfully mad monarch ("The Banquet"). And a delicious stew ostensibly featuring a murdered child's flesh is served to jaded aristocrats in the cheerfully mordant "Dinner at Countess Pavahoke's." Johnston's brilliant translations vividly convey the radically unconventional content and style of one of the strangest--and greatest--of writers. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
