"Dom na krawędzi" Maria Nurowska

Polish publisher: Znak, 2012

By reading Dom na krawędzi I have thrown myself into the very centre of the story about the ex-convict, Daria. This woman killed her husband and spent 6 years in prison. I have not read the first part of this story titled Drzwi do piekła and I felt a bit confused at times. Particularly, when the past of the heroine was concerned. However, Nurowska has created a further part of the story, where the need of a new life has conquered the past.

Daria changes her identity and she built a house on the edge in Bukowina. She opens a guesthouse and tries to straighten her winding paths. But fate has different plans and Daria meets Iza, the former prison psychiatrist, who helped her to survive the years of isolation. For Iza career is the most important and she leaves her daughter, Ola, at Daria's place. This bitter-sweet relationship will irretrievably affect Ola's life, who has got two mothers now. It all gets even more complicated when Daria falls in love with Paweł- the doctor who visited her guesthouse. For Ola it is also a time of fascination with Paweł's terminally ill son, Antek. It appears that each character has something to hide and detaching oneself from the past is more difficult than they can imagine.

I really like the author's style: poetic, full of melancholia entwined with descriptions of nature. Nurowska will enter the inner world of the characters with surgeon's precision and great attention to analyse their emotions. Each relationship is taken to pieces with great intensity and the reader is a bit embarrassed that he took part in it. I reckon that attentive reading of Drzwi do piekła will help me to understand the two women's toxic relationship better, because it it the outline of Nurowska's novel. I just simply regret that I have started reading in the wrong order.

fot. Elżbieta Lempp, link