White Nights by Urszula Honek

White nights by Urszula Honek

Polish fiction

Original title – Biale Noce

Translator – Kate Webster

Source – Personal copy

This was the book that jumped off the longlist for the booker. Firstly, this is the one book that I hadn’t heard of off the list. Secondly, when I read the description of a debut novel from a poet, which always catches my eye, the setting in a rural village ticked another box for me. Then it mentioned that the stories tackle life and death. I was lucky as all that meant it was the first book I ordered seconds after the longlist. Came up online. I have held back reviewing it as it is maybe one of the better books I read on this year’s longlist, and it has made our shortlist, so it could be near our winner, maybe. I also like that it was a completely new publisher to me which is always great to find. Were you aware of this book or publisher before the longlist came out?

A house like a chicken coop, so that if you leaned on it or kicked at it, all the planks would fall to the ground, and some would break in half, everything rotten. How it didn’t collapse on their heads over the years, I don’t know. Maybe they walked on tiptoe and didn’t cry out when they fucked, or when they had bust-ups, otherwise I don’t get it. Plus the house sits on the very edge of the hill, right next to the turnoff to Roznowice. If you drove past in a lorry, you could high-five Pilot as he leaned out of the window. Everything inside must have been shaking when they were eating or sleeping, I wouldn’t have coped with it for that long, but what can you do if you’ve got no choice? And there was just the one main room, plus a kitchen and the crapper outside, and twelve mouths to feed – well, eleven and a half, cos Pilot only counted as half. Did I use to go there?

The rural homes here is Pilots

The book is set in southern Poland in the Beskid Niski region. This mountainous region is very sparsely populated, with a wide range of nature and fauna. But for those who live and work there, it is a place where, on the whole, they are isolated and tend to be the sort of people who never go far from their home village. The stories are scattered in a way the events in the stories aren’t in a straight timeline, so characters come and go. The stories are centred around a group of friends. The first one we meet is Pilot, a name because he always seems to be looking in the air.The book opens with the author deciding to grow carp in a pond in his garden; of course, this is a regular Christmas meal in Poland. Andrej has lived with Pilot in a huge communal dwelling with other men, and this guy is haunted in many ways by his life. These are men with little education. They are just getting by in the world around them. Then add a butcher sister and families. This is a tale of a village of old lovers. What happens when one of this close group dies? How do the others take that death?

It was a beautiful day like this, summer, you could walk around in just your underpants, no one was ashamed of anyone here, because there was nothing to hide. At the last judgment, everyone will be standing side by side, not a fig leaf in sight, just as they were born, which is to say in the body they died in, but naked, that’s what I mean. Saturdays in the summer meant a trip to the Ropa river, which can be fast and deep, but that’s what rivers are, right? Not splashing around in the shallows, but going in up to your neck, up to your head, disappearing under the water. You have to feel its weight, that sometimes it will bash you about a bit, and other times it will embrace you like love, and it grows pleasant, light, and then you can die. Otherwise there’s no point. This is my carliest memory – my father and I are going to the river, we’re making our way through the big butterbur leaves, I hold his hand tight and wish I could never let go, and then I go into the water, I lose my balance and fall beneath the surface,

From the tale The cliff where the baker something happens to her

This is a harsh world. I was reminded of the pit villages near me and those in Northumberland. I used to pick people up from the rural setting and small villages where some people ended up trapped in this village. A death of a baker did she die from a fall or was she pushed. Sisters that walk in line the stories are little c=glimpsesd into this rural world that one imagines aren’t set to survive. This world is where smartphones and the wider world seem distant in their bubble. For me, it ticked the box of rural drama. I love tales that take us away from city life into those little places where everyone knows one another, and like in these stories, there is history and pasts that have sculptured their lives. I hope we get more from this poet-turned-writer . Have you read this collection? Which of the longlisted book jumped out when it came out?

Winston’s score is a rural tale of those living on the edge of Poland, living on the edge of their own lives.