The Polish Lover [Hardcover]

Anthony Weller (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1997

The Polish Lover is an erotic novel of music, obsession, and exile - a first-person memoir of an affair, equal parts lust and love, gone wrong. Danny, a young jazz clarinetist from New York, meets a powerful expatriate Polish beauty named Maja while on tour in the South Pacific. Their tumultuous relationship leads back to her homeland in Eastern Europe during an icy Christmas, and a stormy end to the entanglement. The Polish Lover explores the difficulties and ecstasies of both improvising jazz and of falling hard for someone who turns out to be dangerous, strong-willed, and deceptive - the heady risks of playing music and of falling in love. Most of all, The Polish Lover is a cadenza of remembered desire, told with candor and humor and heat. And it is one of the few authentic jazz novels by a writer who is also a professional musician.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

In this memoir-like tale of a fateful love affair, reminiscent of Francoise Sagan's Bonjour Tristesse and other bittersweet, contemporary first novels, jazz clarinetist Danny encounters a beautiful, enigmatic Polish woman on a South Pacific gig and impulsively changes his life. Maja, an expatriate Pole living in Amsterdam, is sexy, maddening, and fond of changing lovers. Danny, who writes from the hindsight of early middle age, is thoroughly seduced, drawn in by Maja's sexual magnetism and ignoring the big, red danger signs posted all along the way. It's only after relocating to Amsterdam and then visiting Poland during a symbolically icy Christmas season that he begins to realize that he's by no means Maja's last lover, merely her latest, and auditions are already in process for his replacement. Interspersed with fresh musical imagery?their first lovemaking is an exquisite jazz riff?this book offers a fascinating look at predemocracy Poland. Recommended for all libraries.?Jo Manning, Univ. of Miami Lib., Coral Gables, Fla.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

An American jazz clarinetist meets a Polish woman in New Zealand. They connect, improvising the first notes of a real-life romantic ballad. Then the musician, Danny, follows the Polish woman, Maja, to Amsterdam. They play the next few choruses of their song--passionate yet tinged with foreboding--before traveling to Warsaw, where the winter cold penetrates the relationship. The song collapses, ending on a dying fall. Like many ballads, the tune is familiar, the chord changes expected. Then we notice the texture, the subtlety with which author Weller reveals the cycle of a relationship, the magnetic field that first attracts and then repels. His brooding novel is as much about jazz (see also, Schneider's Blue Bossa, reviewed above) as it is about love, and significantly, its climax comes with a recording Danny makes in Warsaw. Here the improvisation works, the pickup Polish rhythm section sensing his feelings and communicating with an intimacy that he and Maja have lost. A hypnotic love story, similar in mood to James Salter's masterpiece, A Sport and a Pastime. Bill Ott

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 230 pages
• Publisher: Marlowe & Co (November 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1569247382
• ISBN-13: 978-1569247389
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,164,276 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

ANTHONY WELLER was born in Georgia in 1957. He is the author of four novels--The Garden of the Peacocks, The Polish Lover, The Siege of Salt Cove and The Land of Later On--and a travel memoir of India and Pakistan, Days and Nights on the Grand Trunk Road. He also edited two collections of his father's Pulitzer Prize-winning World War II reporting, First into Nagasaki and Weller's War. For many years he was a highly-regarded jazz and classical guitarist.

Married, he lives in coastal Massachusetts and Italy.

Visit www.anthonyweller.com & www.writeweller.com.