From Library Journal
"This whole terrible world is upside down," exiled Polish poet Zofia Bronska Ilinska tells English author Marsden (The Crossing Place: A Journey Among the Armenians, LJ 4/15/95) as they revisit the Eastern Europe of her childhood. Published in Britain in 1996, this work combines an account of 1990s Belarus, based on Marsden's travels with Ilinska, with an interpretation of the past, drawn from her mother's journals and papers from the outset of World War I to the start of World War II. The traumas of war are intermingled with the everyday life of two generations of young women coming of age. In scenes reminiscent of Doctor Zhivago, the book powerfully depicts the effects of war on a wealthy family who became impoverished refugees. Plagued by constantly shifting borders, the family also moved from place to place as they fled the ever-changing enemy?sometimes German, sometimes Russian, sometimes their Belorussian neighbors. A moving account; highly recommended for all libraries.?Denise J. Stankovics, Rockville P.L., Vernon, Ct.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
The late poet Zofia Ilinska, nee Bronski, fled Poland in September 1939 at the start of World War II; she was 17. Along with her mother, Zofia settled on the English coast in Cornwall. In 1993, after receiving a letter from a cousin in Poland asking her to visit, Zofia returned to her native village. She was accompanied by her longtime friend, writer Philip Marsden. She looked for the family home and the silver candlesticks she had buried in the forest. She found neither, but a few of the villagers remembered her. Marsden intertwines the story of Zofia's journey with her mother's letters, notebooks, and diaries, hundreds of pages that bring the world of Zofia's family's prewar past in Europe to life. Both a requiem for a vanished world and a tribute to a remarkable woman. George Cohen
