Confidential, Polish photographer and psychologist Mikołaj Grynberg's haunting, bitingly funny novella, begins exactly where his lauded story collection, I'd Like to Say Sorry, but There's No One to Say Sorry To, concludes. Returning translator Sean Gasper Bye ensures a seamless transition. Confidential's first line precisely duplicates the last sentiment of the earlier work's final story and continues: "I suggest you practice saying goodbye to your memories.... It's time to set time free." Storytelling enables that process of letting go, presented here as 27 exquisite chapters, so succinct that each could stand alone as individual narratives.
For one extended Polish family, one Sunday each month is reserved for lunch at Grandpa's. Despite Grandpa's grumpy predictability, "the most important thing is we're all alive and we're together." Amid the banter and (bad) jokes, the youngest grandson complains about Grandpa "always going on about Jews." When reminded they're all Jews, the boy retorts, "I'd rather be an Englishman."
Being Jewish, despite vastly different experiences from one generation to the next, is what connects this family. Grandpa and Grandma survived the Holocaust. Their firstborn--who survived five years until the liberation--became a respected physicist who had to go to Paris to be convinced to attend important conferences in Germany. His wife endured French orphanages until she was miraculously reunited with her mother post-war. Grynberg brilliantly composes his fiction with a photographer's eye. His chapters are reminiscent of snapshots ready to be compiled into an album. The act of reading encourages a careful piecing-together to create a beautiful family portrait--intimate, poignant, multi-generational--confronting the inescapable legacy of surviving (for some) the grievous Holocaust. --Terry Hong