The Polish Woman: A Novel [Hardcover]

Eva Mekler (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 19, 2006

The Polish Woman, set in New York and in Poland, is a gripping post-Holocaust story with a fresh, highly suspenseful mystery twist. An attractive 29-year-old Polish woman suddenly appears before a New York Jewish family in 1967, claiming to be the long-lost daughter of a recently deceased family member. He was a Holocaust survivor who had hidden a daughter with a Catholic farm family in Poland to try to save her from the Nazis. Is the woman who she claims to be, or a scam artist intent on inheriting the dead man's fortune, or something else? The search for the woman's true identity takes a young male member of the family across the ocean with her in a detective-story-like search to movingly peel back her past, like onion layers. This is a story that will entrance readers who relish suspense, drama, little explored aspects of the Holocaust, and the many threads of human character, from greed and fear to personal romantic attachment and motivation.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In this unembellished he-said-she-said, Karolina Staszek, a Polish-Catholic sculptor working as a nanny in 1967 Manhattan, tells her Jewish employer, Noah Landau, that she may be his cousin—a cousin thought to have died decades before in a Nazi death camp. She throws his family into turmoil. Although Karolina's claim is based on the flimsiest of childhood memories, Noah believes the mysterious foreigner he's also infatuated with and sends her to persuade his cynical lawyer cousin, Philip. Is Karolina really the daughter of their recently deceased Uncle Jake, who hid her from the Nazis with rabidly anti-Semitic Polish farmers who took Jake's money only to disappear with Karolina after the war so they wouldn't have to return her? Or perhaps she's a charming fraud with designs on the nephews' sizable inheritance, or a pathetic soul who's appropriating someone else's wartime experience in order to repress her familial and national guilt over the Holocaust? The characters' motivations, particularly in their love lives, are often underdeveloped, but Mekler's (Sunrise Shows Late) emotionally tantalizing tale is simply and lucidly written and offers an unflinching look at Polish anti-Semitism and the destruction it wreaked on both Jewish and Polish psyches long after WWII. (Feb. 1)
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Review

A book not to overlook....An intriguingly good read. -- Ed Silverman, New Jersey Jewish News, April 12, 2007

A haunting portrait...Strongly evoked...The understated and moving story of a woman whose memories open so many old wounds. -- Desmond Ryan, Philadelphia Inquirer, 2/2/07

A haunting tale of the perils of trust and mistrust....Convincing....A novel meditation on the ways we manufacture memory. -- Kirkus Reviews

A meticulous, raw study of the uneasy relationship between Catholic and Jewish Poles....cooly composed.... also a straightforward mystery. -- Lizzie Skurnick, New York Times Book Review, April 8, 2007

Paced like a thriller, the story also comes to us in the chaste sentences of a literary master. -- Nancy Weber in ThriveNYC on Jan 2007

Stunning...well-crafted....adding depth and resonance to a gripping read.Not to be missed...a tale well told. -- Library Journal, 12/15/06

Vividly drawn characters, both major and minor...The tale itself is compelling, combining romance and mystery. -- Wladyslaw Pleszczynski, The Wall Street Journal, 3/3/07

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 264 pages
• Publisher: Bridgeworks - Warren Phillips; 1St Edition edition (December 19, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1882593995
• ISBN-13: 978-1882593996
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.3 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,282,964 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Greenpoint to Lublin, June 1, 2009

By 

Gabriel Orgrease (Bullamanka, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Polish Woman: A Novel (Hardcover)

The Polish-American experience is a complex one and there is a vast disparity in that experience between if one is a Jew or a Catholic. I am neither of the above, and I am not Polish.

"Americans are not interested in Poland," she concluded as though this were a foreign conclusion. "Why should they be? When our artists and intellectuals leave, they go to Paris or Prague and live with respect as émigrés. Only our poor go to America where they become refuges - which Americans make sound like a dirty word."

As an American my interest in Poland derives from a business partner of some 20 years whose mother was from Poland, living in Williamsburg-Greenpoint, Brooklyn amid the Polish community (before it became fashionable to live there), in the construction business of historic preservation employing Polish mechanics over many years, several Polish friends (particularly Misia Leonard, deceased, a Polish born actress who became an architect), and lastly a friend who has been gracious to bring me to visit his homeland on several visits. One of those visits in connection with the desire to reconstruction a 17th century log and timber synagogue near to Bialystok.

Mekler's novel, a romance, explores not so much the Polish-American experience, though it is certainly evident in very subtle and striking details, as she explores the very difficult relationship between Polish Catholic and Jew.

"So this is how you will decide?" Meyer grumbled. "Over coffee and a danish?"

It is an incredibly bitter relationship full of emotional land mines and deep scars of distrust and hatred, and has to do with the Holocaust and how it was played out in Poland, and continues to play out in the lives of the characters. It also plays out in the lives of my friends, a few of whom have distanced themselves from me as I have become increasingly interested in the richness of the culture of Eastern Europe, and in particular the Polish facility for heritage restoration.

The novel takes place in the late 1960s, prior to Solidarity when Poland was under Soviet domination, and prior to the assassination of Martin Luther King (an historical detail I throw in for benefit of the disinterested American). Since the 1970s Poland has gone through a whole lot of changes in politics, I suspect though that the land, the trees, the rivers, the birds have remained pretty much the same. My personal forays have been with a look in a range of the 1300s, or earlier up to the current post-EU Poland. What I can say, and this from visits to a variety of synagogues, churches and mosques is that the Catholic-Jew relationship is not as volatile in Poland today as it was in the late 1960s. It did no help anyone that in Poland the history and memory of millennia of Jewish culture was repressed by decades of Soviet domination.

"The Soviets would bleed the country dry before letting the Poles succeed in anything but growing potatoes..."

Karolina Staszek is the female protagonist of this novel. She is a sculptor, works with stone, and she has come to New York from Warsaw as a young artist. In the unfolding of the plot she is faced with the quandary if she was the child of a Jewish leatherworker who was harbored during the Holocaust as a child by a Catholic farmer and his wife. If her father was the Jewish leatherworker he subsequently survived the Holocaust and moved to America where he became wealthy as a construction contractor. Karolina becomes enmeshed in seeking out the truth of her background, if her identity is as a Jew or a Catholic. Along in the plot there are various emotional and romantic attachments, and for those needing it some very pleasantly subtle sex scenes. Oh, yes, and there is a Jewish lawyer involved.

There is also much beauty to the Polish-English language of the dialogue of this novel, a particular breaking down in translation that often creates new measures of understanding between cultures.

"Good," Karolina said. "Soon you will speak like a native."

Philip broke into a grin. "Yeah?"

"No," she said, without breaking her stride. "But I wish to encourage."

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A poignant and emotional tale of terrible repercussions that last a lifetime., April 6, 2007

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Polish Woman: A Novel (Hardcover)

Written by Eva Mekler, The Polish Woman is a haunting novel about tragedy and love. Set in 1967 New York, The Polish Woman follows the story of Jewish lawyer Philip Landau, charged with handling the estate of a holocaust survivor, when a woman appears on his doorstep and identifies herself as the survivor's daughter, long since presumed dead. Even though she remembers certain details that suggest she could be the missing daughter, the situation appears suspicious, especially with inheritance at stake, yet Philip is dutifully obligated to meticulously research and examine her story. In the process, and in spite of professional etiquette, he falls in love with her. In a trip to Poland, a nation rife with postwar anti-Semitism, the two of them uncover the full truth that will forever change their relationship. A poignant and emotional tale of terrible repercussions that last a lifetime.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Marvelous Book, July 22, 2008

By 

susan (New York, NY, United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Polish Woman: A Novel (Hardcover)

Marvelous book. Brilliant! What a perfect story to subtly tap into all the emotions, Jewish & Christian surrounding the Holocaust. And so beautifully written. I could not put it down. The ending ties everything together magnificently while complicating every thought the reader has had up to then. Genius! Excellent group of characters, each one more believable than the next. And their relationships were so well depicted that I felt I was actually there. I am insisting that everyone I know read it, starting with my husband.