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, with the earlier work's final story, "Stagnant Waters," directly addressing a Mr. Grynberg and ending with, "maybe this time fate will give you the chance to write stories in real time. Unless you know how to outrun events and, cursing the past, write a happy ending." Confidential's first line precisely duplicates that last sentiment, then challenges, "You don't, I can tell. You got stuck." The exhortations continue: "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. Arriving 15 minutes early for their two o'clock meal nonetheless earns loud admonishments from the third-floor balcony: "I've been standing here for fifteen minutes scared to death that something had happened to you!" 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. Grandpa became a much beloved (probably by too many women) doctor. He outlived Grandma and remarried. 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 (but not her father) post-war; she attends funerals to inspire her to cry. One father will accidently kill the mother; their children will convince the father to keep living. One mother will announce to her grown sons she's finally reclaiming her birthname.
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
Shelf Talker: Mikołaj Grynberg's outstanding Confidential is a collection of cleverly interlinked stories that reveal the lives of multiple generations of an extended Jewish Polish family.