07/10/2017
In this excellent debut novel, Greg combines a series of vignettes into a coming-of-age story about persistence through hardship. The book follows a young girl, Wiola, as she matures into a woman during the late 1980s, the final years of the Polish People’s Republic. The narrative is centered in the fictional village of Hektary, a struggling rural community. Wiola narrates her experiences: reuniting with her absent father, accepting the death of her first pet, being sexually assaulted, and, eventually, defining herself. Each chapter is contained and strong enough to stand as its own piece of short fiction. Recurring images of flies reinforce the book’s theme of degradation, particularly the decay of innocence and youth. The concise sentences and stark language mirror the scarcity of daily life during the collapse of the Soviet Bloc. The protagonist’s recollections also delve into collisions between religious and political ideology, exemplifying the conflict between self and society. Marciniak’s deft translation amplifies the engrossing sensory details of Greg’s heartbreaking and enlivening novel. (Sept.)
"Warm, subversively funny and elegiac for a lost rural life but unflinching in its depiction of the darker strands of Polish society, Swallowing Mercury is constructed around a spine of resistance and individuality."—Times Literary Supplement
"The book’s appearance in the U.S. is a great gift . . . Greg’s masterful first novel is charming, seductive, and sinister by turns."—Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)
"Greg’s fictional debut combines the opposing literary styles of socialist realism and magic realism in intoxicating sentences that convey sensuous detail so delightfully that one feels as though one is eating watermelon outdoors in summer."—Booklist (Starred Review)
"Marciniak’s deft translation amplifies the engrossing sensory details of Greg’s heartbreaking and enlivening novel."—Publishers Weekly
"This enchantingly elliptical fiction debut by British-domiciled Polish poet Wioletta Greg sparkles with a gem-like quality. Thanks to Eliza Marciniak's crisp translation, it brings freshness even to the crowded genre of the novella-sized bildungsroman, and can be devoured alongside the best coming-of-age translations of recent years, such as Down the Rabbit Hole by Juan Pablo Villalobos, Signs Preceding the End of the World by Yuri Herrera and The Dead Lake by Hamid Ismailov."—The Guardian
"Wioletta Greg's first novel shines with a surreal and unsettling vigor. As an award-winning poet, Greg writes with a lyricism that brings alive the charms and dangers of Wiola's life."—The Financial Times
"Swallowing Mercury is both magical and sinister, a memoir and a fairytale and, like Wiola, completely captivating."—The Irish News
"Greg writes with a precise, strange charm, and the poet’s acute sensitivity to detail. Little by little, I felt the presence of young Wiola appear beside me—vital, quick-witted and curious, picking her way through the dark woods of faith, family, sex, and politics as if in some melancholy fairytale. I experienced the book like a series of cool, clear drinks, each more intoxicating than the last."—Sarah Perry, author of The Essex Serpent
"I have been utterly 'swallowed' by this odd yet oddly familiar folk novella—somewhere between memoir and fairytale—which has magic and menace in perfect measure."—Sarah Baume, author of Spill Simmer Falter Wither
"I really loved this strange book, which is sometimes sinister and sometimes lovely, and many other things besides."—Evie Wyld, author of All the Birds, Singing
"This book comes the way memory does, in fragments, like something overheard or glimpsed through a gap in a door. It might feel as if you shouldn’t be listening, should turn away, but it is impossible to do so."—Daisy Johnson, author of Fen
"A sparkling little gem of a book—there is a freshness and truthfulness in Wioletta Greg's writing that reminded me of Elena Ferrante and Tove Jansson."—Carys Davies, author of The Redemption of Galen Pike
"Swallowing Mercury shows how the overwhelming forces of beauty, politics, mortality, violence, and hope can animate even the smallest moments of life."—Rowan Hisayo Buchanan, author of Harmless Like You
★ 2017-06-20
An autobiographical novel about a young girl growing up in a small Polish village.Greg (Finite Formulae and Theories of Chance, 2014, etc.) has published several volumes of poetry and been translated into at least five different languages. Her first book of prose, an autobiographical novel (or a fictionalized memoir), was received to great acclaim in the U.K. and was longlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize. The book's appearance in the U.S. is a great gift. The novel describes Greg's childhood and early adolescence in a small Polish village in the 1970s and '80s. It is composed of short, vivid chapters that glisten and gleam, clicking one behind the other like pearls on a string. In one, Wiola (as she is called here) anticipates a visit from the pope to their village—really, he will just be driving through, but the village women eagerly prepare bunting to welcome him. Just as the bunting has been finished, however, a crowd of men arrives to destroy it: these are communist times, after all. Greg's ability to describe moments of great historical, political, and cultural importance through the eyes of a child is wonderful. She remains focused on her young protagonist even as the Soviet Union splinters around her. Even better is Greg's emphasis on bright, almost otherworldly images that crop up throughout these chapters. Wiola's father practices taxidermy in his spare time; one day, after completing a project, he falls asleep on the sofa: "The goshawk, with its artificially spread wings, soared above him." Later, her father dies, but before he does, Wiola notices "the shadow of a queen bee flicker[ing] in the window." The images give the novel a fairy-tale quality, as does the threat of sexual violence, which echoes throughout several chapters. Greg's masterful first novel is charming, seductive, and sinister by turns.
