Swallowing Mercury

I'm Polish , so I can relate to events described in this book.This is NOT a novel and it shouldn't be called novel, memoir rather.The author is very honest, maybe too honest. I spent most of my childhood on my grandmothers farm and there were no buckets with urine sitting around and no flies feasting on spilled sugar in the kitchen.My family is clean as opposed to Wioletta's. A foreign reader may have impression that all Polish farmers are filthy, that is not true. In fact I never encountered the dirt, laziness and neglect described in this book.I'm sorry for the author that she had to grow up in such desolated environment. The style of the book is not innovative and certainly not "romantic" or"poetic" as advertised.But it brought some fond memories, that's why I like it.I don't understand why the book was nominated for The International Booker, are our standards so low, really?

I am Polish, born in NYC in 1952 and maybe I am from a different generation and upbringing. I have visited Poland back as far as 1968 and I have never ever been around people as described in this book. People I have known in Poland are exquisitely polite, honorable and most love animals and they are members of the family. In fact, I come from a long line of animal rescue people, but this book seems to be a memoir, not fiction, first of all, and should have been touted as such.The people in this book are what my Mother would have called Hamy or Halota, which means lowlifes and below the line...I am not here to criticize a writer or her upbringing; this is her memoir of living a life that I do not recognize as being Polish. Polish homes are so clean they are spotless, it's an obsession, just like food which is prepared with love and no matter what it is it is delicious and abundant, " a guest in the house is God in the house" and another saying is "what the little house has is it's wealth" meaning no matter how poor the household it is wealthy, because the people are so generous they give everything they have.Overall I found this book really a booklet, very unpleasant to read. I am not unrealistic, I know what life was like in Poland during communism but the people I knew made it work with amazing humor and grace. This book tells a story I do not recognize at all. Phoeey!

Very interesting picture of cold war Poland. Quite chilling and depressing but with the wonderful clarity and magical biew of a child. Worth reading.

One of my all-time favorites.

Interesting story though a little haunting.The cover is very interesting as well. Nice presentation by Transit Books.

Very simple. Simplistic?

“Swallowing Mercury” is a memoir of a girl growing up in rural Poland in the 1970s and 80s. It’s based on Greg’s early life in the Jurassic Highland, the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains along Poland’s southern border. The book is a series of short "snapshots", each of 4-5 pages, starting soon after her birth and going through menarche and her first boyfriend.It's interesting, and smoothly written, with a scattering of poetical descriptive touches. It conveys a solid vision of agricultural life in an isolated rural area. But it lacks immediacy; it doesn't feel personal. Greg wrote the book in the first person, but she maintains a distance between the narrator and the events by never relating the feelings of the girl. E.g., several incidents of unwanted sexual advances occur (not only by men), and the action is described in full, but the girl’s feelings about it, or even her thinking, are left for the reader to imagine. It's almost as if Greg is telling us, in the first person, about a movie she saw, a movie about herself. Compare, for example, the recent "History of Wolves," by Emily Fridlund. That book describes a girlhood in northern Minnesota; like Greg's book it includes the girl's early sexual experiences. But, the girl's emotions are described, and integrated with her overall attitude toward other aspects of her life. It's a much richer tapestry.It’s possible that the translation contributes to this ‘sterilization’ process, but I doubt it. However, the title of the book is a terrible “translation”, a huge burden for the book to bear. The original Polish title is “Gugly”. In the stories, "gugly" is translated as "unripe fruit". “Unripe Fruit” would be infinitely better than "Swallowing Mercury" as a title. In one of the stories the young girl swallows some mercury, but it is an isolated incident, not overly significant. As a title, it’s hideous; it sounds like "Seeking Death" or something macabre like that. The young girl is, herself, "Unripe Fruit", so it's a natural title. It also comes up twice in the stories. It’s difficult to imagine the reasoning behind the choice of title in English.

On the Man Booker International Prize 2017 Longlist. These short, autobiographical stories of growing up in rural Poland during the 1970s and 1980s are delightful and somewhat unassuming. Greg, a poet who was born in Poland and now lives in England, writes in a crisp, no-frills manner and captures the rich world of country life under a moderate Communist regime where church rituals and superstitions play a large role. (The mother ties a red string around her newborn’s wrist to ward off evil spells.) The poet’s grasp of language does come through occasionally (the sun “rusting” in the sky, the air smelling of “watermelon pulp” after a rain, the “trotters quivered on a plate” at a wedding), but for the most part, those embellishments are used sparingly. The characters are well drawn with just a few strokes and recur from story to story.

Bought it as a present, arrived all bent and mangled so utterly unsuitable.