Ludwik addresses his remembrances to one of his most recent lovers, Janusz, whom he met at an agricultural camp designed to politicize youth. From the “dreadful safety of America,” he is instantly thrown back to a time before “loneliness covered like night-blue tar.”

Jedrowski’s exquisite novel vividly traces the life of immigrant Ludwik Glowacki from his childhood in Poland to that country’s declaration of martial law, which Ludwik hears about on the radio while living in the Slavic community of Greenpoint, Brooklyn. It usually involves reliving profoundly painful memories recalled after a significant period of time before some resolution occurs. Regardless of genre, the form focuses on the past as narrated by the main character. Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain and Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude are exemplary representatives of the concept in novel format.

Stone”) and in the short-story collections Hard Candy and One Arm and Other Stories. Tennessee Williams coined the term to refer to “ The Glass Menagerie” and perfected it in other plays (most notably “ A Streetcar Named Desire,” “ Summer and Smoke,” and “ The Roman Spring of Mrs. (Apr.)Ĭorrection: An earlier version of this review misspelled the author's last name.Tomasz Jedrowski’s seductive coming-of-age debut novel, Swimming in the Dark, reads like a memory play. Jedrowski’s portrayal of Poland’s tumultuous political transformation over several decades makes this a provocative, eye-opening exploration of the costs of defying as well as complying with social and political conventions. Readers will relish the indelible prose, which approaches the mastery of Alan Hollinghurst. Additionally, Janusz’s sexual relationship with a wealthy young woman named Hania, which he carries on in hopes of benefiting from her father’s political connections, creates conflict between the two men. Despite their ease of connection, Ludwik and Janusz are on opposite sides of a political divide: Janusz is happy to work within the system and gets a government job deciding which books should be published, which Ludwik-who has to carefully craft a literary doctoral thesis that won’t go against the party line-sees as censorship. In second-person narration addressed to his new friend and lover, Ludwik reflects on furtive childhood desires (“Years of yearning compressed like a muscle, pulsating mercilessly”) and describes their secret savoring of a banned James Baldwin book. At a summer work camp in 1980, 22-year-old Ludwik Głowacki meets the broad-shouldered Janusz, with whom he discusses the repression and loneliness of gay men in their society. Jedrowski’s dazzling debut charts an evocative sexual awakening and coming of age amid political unease in early 1980s Poland.

Swimming in the dark