Title: Swimming in the Dark
Author: Tomasz Jedrowski
Publisher: HarperCollins
Length: 224 Pages
Category: Literary Fiction
Rating: 5 Stars
At a Glance: Tomasz Jedrowski’s deeply moving and stunningly portrayed novel of love set against a backdrop of political unrest and divided loyalties reads like both memoir and confessional. It is a passionate novel, beautiful and complex and desperately poignant.
Reviewed By: Lisa
Blurb: When university student Ludwik meets Janusz at a summer agricultural camp, he is fascinated yet wary of this hand¬some, carefree stranger. But a chance meeting by the river soon becomes an intense, exhilarating, and all-consuming affair. After their camp duties are ful¬filled, the pair spend a dreamlike few weeks in the countryside, bonding over an illicit copy of James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room. Inhabiting a beautiful, natural world removed from society and its con¬straints, Ludwik and Janusz fall deeply in love. But in their repressive Communist and Catholic society, the passion they share is utterly unthinkable.
Once they return to Warsaw, the charismatic Janusz quickly rises in the political ranks of the party and is rewarded with a highly coveted government position. Ludwik is drawn toward impulsive acts of protest, unable to ignore rising food prices and the stark economic disparity around them. Their secret love and personal and political differences slowly begin to tear them apart as both men struggle to survive in a regime on the brink of collapse.
Review: I was fifteen years old when a man named Lech Wałęsa was introduced as a heroic symbol of freedom on the nightly news, and Solidarność was a word that meant something like rebellion in a foreign land. Germany was divided into East and West. We were deeply entrenched in the Cold War with the USSR. Communism was portrayed as shades of gray in a colorless world where food was scarce and autonomy was scarcer. And nuclear anxiety would become a staple of the decade.
Tomasz Jedrowski’s deeply moving and stunningly portrayed novel of love set against a backdrop of political unrest and divided loyalties reads like both memoir and confessional. It is the story of a young man, Ludwik Głowacki, who aspires to something more than a life answering to the Party in order to get ahead. In 1980 Poland, it wasn’t what you did, or how well you did it, but who you knew and whether they would advocate for you that dictated how you lived in a place where food scarcity could mean standing in line for hours for a loaf of bread. Ludwik takes readers on a journey from past to present, spilling his thoughts and feelings onto the page, speaking to Janusz but knowing his words will likely never be read by the man they’re meant for, and making voyeurs of those of us who get a peek into Ludwik’s soul. There is poignancy in that knowledge that influences the tone of the story and reaches out to readers, appealing to our compassion for Ludwik, Janusz, and the ultimately insurmountable odds against them at a time when homosexuality was a political and social crime.
Ludwik’s mother and grandmother are largely responsible for his questioning of the system when they introduce him to Radio Free Europe, an act of revolution in and of itself that could result in harsh punishment. Getting news from the West—from the outside world—lies in direct contradiction to the propaganda from the Polish government which states that democracy and the evils of capitalism stand as the antithesis of a well-functioning and orderly society. Censorship desires to control thoughts and influence opinions; it’s when Ludwik comes across an illicit copy of James Baldwin’s seminal and subversive (for the time) novel Giovanni’s Room that he sees something of himself on its pages, and he knows then that he is not alone. It’s through Baldwin’s words and truths that Ludwik also recognizes that America, for all its freedoms, has its own systemic warts and deep flaws.
Ludwik sharing the book with Janusz is an act of courage as well as a bridge that connects them. Watching them fall in love while acknowledging that they can never openly claim their love, not as long as they remain in Poland, is what will become their biggest obstacle. Ludwik wants to escape to the West, to a place that holds a promise of more, while Janusz is determined to maintain the status quo and play by the Party’s rules—even if it means losing the man he loves. Watching Janusz submit to the system that dictates he can’t love Ludwik is heartbreaking. Seeing Ludwik escaped that same system doesn’t give the story a happy tone; it analogizes the title of the book. Swimming in the dark meant Ludwik treading water, not sure he was staying afloat as much as he was stuck in place, until he made the decision to move forward into the unknown.
Swimming in the Dark is a passionate novel, beautiful and complex and desperately poignant.
You can buy Swimming in the Dark here:
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