book review and giveaway: A Long Long Time Ago & Essentially True

taken from Goodreads:

"The novel opens on the eve of World War II. In the mountain village of Half-Village, a young man nicknamed the Pigeon, under the approving eyes of the entire village, courts the beautiful Anielica Hetmanska. But the war's arrival wreaks havoc in all their lives and delays their marriage for six long years. Nearly fifty years later, their granddaughter, Beata, leaves Half-Village for Krakow, the place where her grandparents lived as newlyweds after the war and the setting of her grandmother's most magical stories. Beata yearns to find her own place in this new city, one that is very different from her imagination and the past. Her first person insight into a country on the cusp of change--and the human toll of Poland's rapid-fire embrace of capitalism--transports readers to another world. When two unexpected events occur, one undeniably tragic, and the other a kind of miracle, Beata is given a fresh glimpse at her family's and her country's, history and a vision of her own essential role in the New Poland. With the effortless, accomplished grace of a gifted storyteller, Pasulka weaves together the two strands of her story, re-imagining half a century of Polish history through the legacy of one profound love affair--that of the Pigeon and Anielica--which readers won't soon forget."

Years ago, I became a huge fan of novels that used myths and fairy tales as a way to reimagine and retell other stories. The best of these books straddle a line between fantasy and reality, literary fiction and genre fiction. Pasulka's novel is one of these books.

Told through alternating narratives, Pasulka mixes folksy language and fairy-tale elements to tell the story of Pigeon and Nela's relationship with a more modern narrative voice and plot sequence for Beata's day-to-day life in Krakow. The movement between the two narratives never gets confusing, nor does it grow tiresome. Instead, the mundane details of Beata's life at the bar and at home provide an interesting contrast to the more general and dreamlike quality of Nela's story.

This is a culture and a city that I'm unfamiliar with, for the most part, but I thought that Pasulka's lively characters and her attention to detail really helped to define this country and its growing pains for me -- a growth that is beautifully reflected through Beata's own struggle to determine her own life and make her own choices. I really connected to her as a character, and I found myself thinking about her and the decisions she made (or didn't make) even when I wasn't reading the novel, which doesn't happen to me all that often. The other characters are just as three-dimensional and defined, and while they often embody any number of stereotypes (which is common in mythic fiction), Pasulka adds more depth and dimension to what are usually fairly flat characters.

The writing is lively, and while I loved the characters, the plot, and the themes at work, it was the writing itself that made this book such a pleasure to read. There's such a range of emotion at work here too -- humor, heartbreak, hope. Pasulka has definitely written a winner. You should definitely pick this one up; I've seen it on the recommended new fiction shelves at a couple of different bookstores lately, and it is definitely worth the purchase price in hardcover.

If you're a reader of this blog, though, you're in luck. I have one copy to send to a random winner. Just leave a comment with your name -- and a book recommendation based on what you are currently reading (although that's not a requirement, just a request) -- and I'll choose a random winner on Friday, September 25, 2009. No international entries please.