On a bus out of 1980 Warszawa to a “work education” youth training facility, their eyes lock for an “infinite, interminable instant in mid-air.” A “flash of heat” travels from “ stomach to cheeks, thoughts jumbled like a ball of string.” He does, however, experience a feeling of loss and the end of innocence, which he believes prepare him for the fragile and dangerous relationship with Janusz.īy the time the two men meet, Ludwik is 22 years old. Unfortunately, Ludwik’s love is in vain: His grandmother tells him, “Beniek is different from us.” Ludwik isn’t sure what that means, nor does he understand why Beniek and his family suddenly leave for Israel one day. This was also the first time he linked desire with shame. The narrator first suspected he was gay when he felt an uncontrollable “need to kiss” a 9-year-old neighbor boy, Beniek, after becoming attracted to him during Holy Communion lessons.
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. Tomasz Jedrowski’s seductive coming-of-age debut novel, Swimming in the Dark, reads like a memory play.
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