This charming, nostalgic book is by a very young writer, poet and painter who comes from a fairly typical Polish “upper class” family; its roots are in the landowning aristocracy, and it has many international connections. Part of the family is from the former eastern borderlands of the pre-war Polish Republic, and part from central Poland. From one generation to the next the landowners become the intelligentsia: writers, artists and engineers or senior officials. It happens in dramatic circumstances; in the background we see a revolution, two wars, the rise and fall of the communist regime, and the extinction of the landowner culture. Dehnel tells us the history of his own family and the whole of Polish society, but makes his grandmother the main narrator – a woman with a wonderful, intriguing personality and enormous character. The story she tells has not been reconstructed chronologically in its logical sequence. It consists of numerous short tales and anecdotes that the grandmother has told her grandson, so the task of piecing it all together is left not just to him, as her audience, but also to the reader, who becomes more and more deeply involved in this typically Polish epic. At the same time the grandmother is gradually declining, falling ill and becoming senile, so in the end it is her grandson who tells her stories he has heard from her in the past. This slowly deteriorating narrative finally comes down to a single plane, where the events of several decades are played out simultaneously. This is an unusual historical record, as well as a tribute to Lala – Helena Bieniecka, the main heroine of events, and the person who turns them into a vivid story in the form of a dialogue with her nearest relatives that matures and grows old with her. Jerzy Jarzębski
